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THE GIST OF GOLF 

HARRY VARDON 



THE GIST OF GOLF 



BY 

HARRY VARDON 



ILLUSTRATED FROM 

PHOTOGRAPHS POSED 

BY THE AUTHOR 



NEW ^Sr YORK 
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 






COPYRIGHT, 1922, 
BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 



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THE GIST OF GOLF. II 



PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 



DEC 20 '22 

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CONTENTS 






CHAPTER 


PAGE 




I 


THE DRIVING SWING . 


. 11 




II 


HOW TO USE THE CLEEK 


. 31 




III 


HOW TO USE THE MID-IRON . 


. . 55 




IV 


HOW TO USE THE NIBLICK 


. . 75 




V 


HOW TO USE THE MASHIE 


. 101 




VI 


A STUDY OF PUTTING 


. 135 



ILLUSTRATIVE CHARTS 

From Photographs Posed 
by the Author 

PAGE 

I THE DRIVE 28 

II THE CLEEK 52 

III THE MID-IRON 72 

IV THE NIBLICK 98 

V THE AIASHIE 132 

VI THE PUTT 154 



Chapter I: THE DRIVING SWING 

WITH SOME ADVICE CONCERNING 
CLUBS AND THE GRIP 



THE GIST OF GOLF 

Chapter I 
THE DRIVING SWING 

WIT^ SOME ADVICE CONCERNING CLUBS AND 
THE GRIP 

A GREAT deal of unnecessarily bad golf is 
played in this world. The people who go 
on playing it, year in and year out, with unquench- 
able hope and enthusiasm, constitute the game's 
mainstay, for their zeal is complete, and zeal that 
remains unabated in the face of long-sustained ad- 
yersity is the most powerful constituent in the 
whole fabric of a prosperous pastime. 

All the same, these chronic sufferers from fooz- 
ling would like to play better than they do. And 
they could play better. There is no reason why a 
physically sound individual, who takes up the game 
before old age with the determination to succeed at 
it, should fail to develop form justifying a toler- 
ably low handicap — say, 5 or 6. After that, every- 
thing must depend upon the person's inborn facul- 
ties as a golfer. As a rule, it is some very simple 

11 



12 THE GIST OF GOLF 

error of ways that retards progress ; an error that 
becomes more or less perpetuated in the system. 

There are various theories as to the best method 
of learning golf. I have no hesitation in saying 
that the struggling player should first make himself 
master of the swing with the wooden clubs — the 
driver or the brassie. It cannot be emphasised too 
strongly that, for most of the shots in golf the prin- 
ciples of the swing are the same. To the unprac- 
tised eye a first-class player may seem to wield his 
mid-iron dififerently from, the manner in which he 
swings his driver, but the variation comes only of 
the fact that the former is the shorter club and that, 
therefore, he has to stand nearer to the ball for it. 
The effect of the shorter club and the position closer 
to the ball is to make the swing more upright, but 
the good golfer is not conscious of any effort to 
change his manner of swinging. 

The mashie and its stout brother, the niblick, 
call for a swing which is rather different from the 
others, and the putter is a thing apart, but for all 
the shots from the tee and through the green until 
we take the mashie for pitching up to the hole, the 
swings are — or should be — identical in their main 
principles. 

Before discussing the golf swing, we ought to 
consider the player's set of clubs and his manner 
of holding them. More than once I have heard 
amateurs say: "No wonder professionals play so 
well, they always pick the best clubs." It is not so 



THE DRIVING SWING 13 

much a matter of choosing the best — everybody 
does that — as of selecting those which are in the 
nature of brothers. The golfer needs what I might 
call a family group of clubs. The "lie" — ^that is, the 
inclination of the club as it is held on the ground 
in the ordinary position for striking — should be 
similar in his set in the sense that the full extent 
of the sole of each club should be capable of rest- 
ing naturally on the ground when the player is 
standing ready for the shot. 

When the heel of the club touches the ground and 
the toe is slightly cocked up in the air, or vice 
versa, the results can hardly be good. Yet thous- 
ands of golfers are influenced solely by the "feel" 
of a club. They will use it in spite of the fact that 
its "lie" is ill-adapted to their stance, and fre- 
quently when, in the end, they discard it in despair, 
they cannot make out what is wrong with it. 

I always advise the novice, or the person who is 
still in the throes of foozling after several years' 
application to the game, to concentrate for a time 
on four clubs — the brassie, mid-iron, mashie, and 
putter, and to leave the mashie alone until he can 
use the brassie and iron with some effect. 

I recommend a brassie at the start, not for play- 
ing shots from the turf, but for learning how to 
drive. It has a stiffer shaft than the driver, and, 
as a result, there is a greater chance of keeping it 
under control. You want a little loft on the face 
of the club, so as to help in getting the ball into the 



14. THE GIST OF GOLF 

air; this element of loft gives confidence to the 
novice, and even if sometimes there is luck in the 
circumstance of his making the ball rise (or if, at 
any rate, he would not have met with such success 
with a straight-faced club), the encouragement that 
he derives from the feat is worth a lot to him. 
He should accustom himself immediately to a low 
tee; if he succumbs to the temptation to poise the 
ball an inch or so clear of the ground for the drive, 
every shot that he has to play from the turf will 
seem twice as difficult to him as it should be. 

It is sound policy to confine your attention to 
these two clubs for three weeks, assuming that you 
practise for an hour several times a week. If you 
want a change, the putter may be tried, because 
there is no harm in experimentation with a variety 
of stances and methods where this club is concerned. 
None of them will interfere with the fixed principles 
which you are trying to introduce into your system 
for the proper manipulation of the other instru- 
ments. 

As time progresses, further clubs will be added 
to the bag, and a person who has been playing for 
two or three years ought to know what clubs suit 
him best. By that time he will have bought a great 
number in the hope of lighting on at least a few 
that seem divinely inspired, and very likely he will 
have fallen into the way of taking out with him a 
large collection. 

There are many golfers who feel that they must 



THE DRIVING SWING [15 

have at least a dozen or fourteen. Seven or eight 
ought to be ample — the driver, brassie, cleek, iron, 
mashie, niblick, and putter, with, perhaps, a particu- 
lar fancy in the way of a spoon or a jigger added 
to the equipment to give a sense of security. The 
spoon is a good substitute for the cleek when the 
latter proves to be in a peevish mood, and some 
golfers prefer the jigger to the mashie. The jigger, 
with its longer blade, strikes them as being the easier 
to use. 

I confess that, on important occasions, I carry 
eleven clubs, but three of these are spares and are 
seldom employed. It is a sound argument, too, that 
the more moderate the player, the better chance 
will he have of improving by pinning his faith to a 
few clubs. 

Now as to grip. I am told that I have acquired 
a reputation for laying down a kind of dogma, that 
nobody can hope to excel at golf unless he adopts 
the overlapping grip. I really do not deserve such 
distinction, because, while I am convinced that the 
grip mentioned is the best, it has never occurred 
to me to tell anybody that it is the only proper 
method. Undoubtedly it is to be recommended 
very strongly to a beginner, who requires only a 
little patience in order to master it, but when a 
person has been gripping in another manner for a 
year or two, it is not always wise to effect a radical 
change \n principle unless that which he favours is 
hopelessly incorrect. It is reasonable to consider 



16 THE GIST OF GOLF 

this matter of the grip with all due regard for human 
fancies and foibles. But we must not lose sight of 
the fact that some styles of gripping are so bad as 
to constitute insurmountable barriers to success. 

As a rule, the involuntary way in which a novice 
takes hold of a club is wrong because he generally 
holds it deeply in the palms of the two hands, with 
the knuckles well under the shaft, and has the 
hands slightly apart. These dispositions are the two 
arch enemies of correct hitting. It is an inexorable 
rule that, to make the ball fly straight you must 
have the back of the left hand facing the way that 
you are going, so that it shall control the club to 
the extent of giving it a straight face at the im- 
pact, and that the two hands must be touching, if 
they are not overlapping, in order that they shall 
not work against one another. 

These are all-important, cardinal points on which 
to base our mode of procedure. I take it, that in 
every game in which a ball has to be struck with 
a club, or bat, or stick, there are right and wrong 
ways of holding that instrument. Certainly such is 
the case in connection with cricket, billiards, and 
other pastimes which I have had opportunities of 
studying. But in no game is it as important as in 
golf, because, whereas you may conceivably score if 
you hit the ball in an unintended direction at cricket 
and the like, you cannot do the right thing by 
getting off the line at golf. And yet there are 
thousands of players who say they like to grip 



THE DRIVING SWING 17 

in the way that feels most comfortable, and that 
they are not going to try anything else. 

It is a very unprofitable attitude to adopt. In 
point of fact, the way that feels most comfortable 
is wrong in four cases out of every five. If I were 
going to try to master billiards (a game of which 
I am very fond, but which I have few chances 
of playing) , I would learn first to hold the cue prop- 
erly. The impulse of the average player seems to 
be to grip it as he might seize a bludgeon with which 
to attack somebody; but it is noticeable that the 
good billiards player holds the cue lightly in his 
fingers. It is just this kind of difference that calls 
for consideration in connection with the golf grip. 

Some of the absolute beginners who ask for les- 
sons are alarming in their ideas of grip. The 
strangest I ever encountered was a lady who wanted 
to be instructed in the rudiments of the game in 
my garden school at Totteridge. This lady con- 
fessed that she had never played before, and she 
arrived with a brand new set of clubs of impressive 
appearance. Following my custom, I asked her to 
execute a few swings in the way that came naturally 
to her, so that I might estimate the style that suited 
her. I noticed that she was gripping curiously, but 
said nothing at the moment. 

Something possessed me to stand in front of her.. 
As a rule, I stand well to the right of a player to- 
see the swing. She fixed her eye on the ball, and 
then, like a flash of lightning, pushed the club 



18 THE GIST OF GOLF 

straight out in front of her. How she proposed 
to hit the ball in that manner I do not know ; what 
I do know is that she very nearly hit me on the 
point of the jaw. If I had not jumped back, I 
should have caught it beautifully. That pupil had 
her first lesson after her first swing. 

There are three golf grips which are more or 
less correct. One is the old-fashioned palm grip, 
in which the player holds the club well in the palm 
of the right hand, with the knuckles under the 
shaft, but has the back of the left hand facing the 
direction of play. Mr. John Ball and Alexander 
Herd are the most illustrious golfers I know who 
adopt this method, and certainly they do very well 
with it. 

I would not dissuade any player from favouring 
it if he felt that it was the only way in which he 
could hit the ball, but it is disadvantageous in a 
heavy lie, because, as the club meets the turf, it is 
likely to turn in the right hand. There is no check 
on it to prevent it turning unless you hold very 
tightly with the right hand, and an intensely hard 
grip is bad for the reason that it tends to render 
taut all the muscles of the arm, whereas they 
should be flexible. However, it is possible to play 
some good shots with this grip, especially when 
the lies are clean and the ball can be picked up with- 
out the club having greater contact with the turf 
than to clip through the closely cropped grass. If 



THE DRIVING SWING 19 

you must adopt such a method, I would say only, 
"Be sure that the hands are touching." 

It is a mistake to suppose that by putting the 
back of the right hand under the shaft, and holding 
the club deeply in the palm, you get more power. 
Or perhaps I should say that it is an error to sup- 
pose that you profit by getting more power in this 
manner, supposing that you do obtain it. As a 
matter of fact, you ought not to be conscious that 
the hands in particular are doing a lot of hard work. 
Their function is to put the club-head into the proper 
position for hitting the ball; not to do the hitting. 
They are to all intents and purposes a connecting 
link between the arms and the club — nothing more. 
It is the swing — the swing of the club, the hands, and 
the arms acting as one piece of mechanism — ^that 
produces the power and makes the ball travel. 

If you try to hit with the hands, you are almost 
sure to spoil the effort by holding too tightly with 
the right. The player who falls into this error gen- 
erally slices. The hands in their desperation arrive 
opposite the ball before the club-head reaches it, and 
the latter is therefore drawn across the ball. You 
will notice that a good golfer usually finishes with 
most of his weight on the right leg. That is be- 
cause, having depended upon the swing to secure the 
distance, he drops on to the right leg to check the 
club. If he were to hit with his hands, his body 
would go forward with the follow-through, and the 



20 THE GIST OF GOLF 

bulk of his weight would be on the left leg at the 
finish. 

It is because the old-fashioned palm grip encour- 
ages — and in bad lies necessitates — a tight grip 
with the right hand that I think it has a defect. 
You need to hold a club firmly, especially with the 
thumbs and forefingers, but not like grim death. 
There is no earthly reason why so many golfers 
should have corns on their hands — ^the consequence 
of very tight gripping. Personally, I never have 
a com on either of my hands except near the little 
finger of the left hand, and that is caused solely 
by the fact that I wear a ring on the finger men- 
tioned. The palm gripper nearly always has a lot 
of corns. 

So much for the ancient method of gripping, 
which is still very extensively practised, especially 
among amateurs. The second acceptable principle 
represents the stage before the overlapping grip. 
Very little change is necessary to alter it to the 
latter. The club is held so that the two thumbs 
rest on the shaft, and, with the fore-fingers, form 
Vs. The right hand, instead of being under the 
shatt, is brought round, and the back of that hand 
faces away from the line of play. The back of the 
left hand looks towards the line of play. 

Here, then, we have the hands nicely balanced — 
the backs of the hands facing in opposite direc- 
tions, and the thumbs and forefingers formed into 
y's with their apex uppermost. This is a sound 



THE DRIVING SWING 21 

grip so long as you remember to make the hands 
meet on the shaft. They must not be apart, even 
to the extent of the tiniest fraction of an inch. 

To proceed from the grip described to that 
known as "overlapping," all that you have to do 
is to bring the right hand a little higher up so that 
the ball of the thumb rests on the back of the left 
thumb and the little finger of the right hand deposits 
itself on the forefinger of the left. In this way you 
make the grip more compact and render the union 
of the hands complete. Some people like to bring 
the right hand so far up that they overlap with 
two or three fingers of it. There is nothing to be 
said against the scheme if the golfer prospers on 
it, but personally I think that the ideal feeling of 
freedom is obtained when one overlaps only with 
that little finger of the right hand. 

These, then, are the three grips suited to the 
game, and it is not too much to say that all others 
have their pronounced faults. The last feature that 
I like to alter in a player's methods is the way in 
which he disposes his hands, but sometimes it is 
unavoidable. When the backs of both hands are 
looking down to the ground (a frequent condition 
in the novice) it is impossible to swing the club. 

There once came to me a man who gripped, with 
the back of the right hand looking upwards. He 
had to turn it in order to get the club up. In 
these cases it is often necessary to put a golfer com- 
pletely off what he calls his game so as to enable 



22 THE GIST OF GOLF 

him ultimately to play a better one. It is a point 
worth remembering that when the early effects of 
changes advised by a teacher are to make the shots 
seem more difficult than ever, it is often a prelude 
to success. When the only way to put a player right 
is to undo at the outset all that he has done wrong, 
he generally suffers a period of purgatory. 

It is a rather curious circumstance that people 
with short fingers generally choose clubs with thick 
handles, while players with long fingers exhibit a 
preference for thin handles. Where the grip is 
concerned, the nature of that part of the club which 
you are going to hold is important, and I would 
advise the short-fingered section of the community 
to select thin grips, because they generally mean 
better balanced clubs than thick grips. The latter 
are sometimes necessary in the case of a person 
with long fingers. Unless the handle were fairly 
substantial, it would be more or less lost in his 
hands. 

Having gone into the questions of our clubs and 
the way we grip them, let us now diagnose the 
swing with the wooden club. It is the basis of suc- 
cessful golf. 

All the good shots in the game (all, at any rate, 
except the putt, which is a thing apart) are founded 
on the principle of the body turning on a pivot 
instead of swaying back and then lunging forward 
at the ball. That pivot is the waist. No 
doubt everybody who has made the slightest study 



THE DRIVING SWING 23 

of golf appreciates this piece of orthodoxy, but 
the number of people who disregard it, even though 
they realise its importance, constitute about half the 
golfing world. Why do they fail to observe the first 
law of the true swing? 

Presumably the reason is that in the days of 
their novitiate they fall into a bad habit which be- 
comes ingrained in their constitutions. They per- 
petrate it without being conscious that they are 
practising it. That is the way with habits. There 
is many a person who will declare till he is black 
in the face that he is not swaying, when you know 
all the while that he is. 

It is a fallacy to suppose that any particular 
part of the body, such as the arms or wrists, has 
to be very specially applied to the task of hitting 
the ball. The whole anatomy should work as one 
piece of mechanism, with the club as part and 
parcel of the human frame. The club-head should 
be started first by means of a gentle half-turn of 
the left wrist towards the body, and the arms 
should follow, thus causing the body to screw round 
at the hips until the arms will go no farther. To 
all intents and purposes you wind up the body with 
the arms and unwind it with the same agents, your 
whole frame turning in such a manner that it never 
moves outside the space which you have allotted 
to it in taking up your position. 

It is as though you had a neck made of india- 
rubber, so that it would allow the shoulders to turn 



24 THE GIST OF GOLF 

without the head moving. If at this moment you 
stand comfortably with your hands on your hips, 
toes pointing outwards, and heels about fifteen 
inches apart, and keeping the head absolutely still, 
screw the body round at the hips and unscrew it 
again, you will have a very fair idea of the proper 
action for the golf swing. Only, of course, you 
screw it round much farther when playing, because 
the freedom of the arms gives it greater liberty 
to turn, and you raise the left heel — without, how- 
ever, allowing it to turn outwards — so as to ease 
the strain on the leg as the hips screw round. 

Many golfers try to hit with the arms. That is a 
mistake. The arms should be in effect simply a con- 
tinuation of the shaft. During my first tour in the 
United States, when the game was young in 
America, there were many theories among the spec- 
tators as to how the shots were accomplished, and 
I remember particularly being cornered by a man 
who, just after I had made a rather good shot, 
jumped the ropes and asked excitedly of a friend 
beside me: "Which arm did he do that with?'' 
My companion put the question to me, and I had 
to look for a moment to make sure that one arm 
had not become shorter or longer than the other. 
I do not believe there is such a thing as a master 
arm in the real golf swing. The two arms work 
as one, and as part of the entire mechanism of 
the body. 

A common cause of swaying is a tendency to take 



THE DRIVING SWING 25 

the club up too quickly. Once a person has become 
an accomplished player, the rapidity of his up-swing 
is not necessarily a matter of great importance, 
because instinctively he works his body properly, 
but for the beginner or mediocre golfer, a fast up- 
swing is usually fatal. It results in most cases in 
a hasty snatch of the club-head from the top of the 
swing, and it is an invariable rule that if you start 
the arms first — either at the beginning or at the top 
of the swing — the result is bad. The club-head 
must lead in each place. The wrists must give it 
the lead. Then the arms will follow it and do 
what is needed of them. 

I would recommend the average golfer to prac- 
tise a steady up-swing, not exactly a creeping 
operation, but slow rather than fast. If, when 
experimenting without a ball, he will raise the club 
very slowly so as to watch just what happens and 
bring it down just as slowly, he will see that it 
comes down precisely as it goes up. It has one 
track. Well, now, even if he starts it properly when 
playing and subsequently develops such pace in the 
up-swing that in his spirit of impetuosity he 
snatches the club from the top, he can be sure 
that it will come down on a different track from 
that which it followed when being raised. The 
arms will throw the club-head forward and the 
body will begin to unwind at the hips a fraction of 
a second too soon, and the consequence will be dis- 
aster. Here we have the cause of more than half 



26 THE GIST OF GOLF 

the foozling in the world. Once the club-head has 
led from the top of the swing, its pace can be accel- 
erated with all the vim that the player possesses. 
But not before. 

The first thing to do is to select a comfortable 
stance on the teeing ground. You have a choice 
within prescribed limits; it is the one place where 
you enjoy such a privilege; and you may as well 
take advantage of it. All teeing grounds are not 
perfectly level, and it is a help to possess a feeling 
of even balance as you address the ball. Stand, 
easily with a distinct sense of relaxation in the joints 
and muscles; if you tighten them during the up- 
swing through a determination to make a tremen- 
dously powerful shot, you are nearly sure to ruin 
the swing. You have nothing to hit till you come 
down. 

Fix your eye on the back of the ball and see 
that the sole of the club is completely grounded 
behind the object — not merely the heel of the club 
resting on the turf and the toe cocked up in the air. 
The feet can be either in line with one another or 
the right foot can be a few inches in advance of the 
left. The latter, I think, is an advantage, because 
it makes the finish easier. It is fatal to have the 
left in front of the right, since you could never finish 
properly in such circumstances. The ball should not 
be midway between the feet; it should be decidedly 
nearer to the left. 

If you are standing properly, the procedure 



THE DRIVING SWING 27 

which produces a satisfactory shot is simply this: 
The club-head starts first, the arms follow, and the 
body screws round at the hips with the head kept 
still until the instrument is in position behind the 
head. Coming down, the club-head again starts 
first, the arms follow, and the hips unscrew until 
the ball is struck, and the pace which the club has 
been gathering on its downward journey produces 
what we call the follow-through. 

There are a few points of detail in connection 
with this operation which call for consideration. I 
have said earlier that you start the club-head first 
by giving the left wrist a gentle half-turn towards 
the body. This is important, because it will put 
that wrist at the top of the swing into the only 
position in which it is capable of doing its work 
properly — that is, arched inwards under the shaft 
instead of arched outwards. If you turn the hips 
correctly, the right leg will straighten as you take 
the club up. You could do with a wooden leg at 
the top of the swing. 

As something must give way to accommodate 
the turn of the body, the left knee bends. Conse- 
quently, the heel is raised from the ground, and as 
the body-turn continues the pressure on the left 
is supported by the inside of the foot — to be pre- 
cise, on that part which stretches from the big 
joint to the end of the big toe. Give the club-head 
a start coming down before you begin to bring the 
arms round and then hit. The all-important matter 



28 THE GIST OF GOLF 

is to get to the top properly and start down prop- 
erly; after that the swing will take care of itself 
so long as you let it go, keep your head down, and 
avoid wondering whether you are likely to miss 
the globe. 



Chapter II: HOW TO USE THE CLEEK 

WITH SOME ADVICE ON ALTERNATIVE 
CLUBS 



Chapter II 
HOW TO USE THE CLEEK 

WITH SOME ADVICE ON" ALTERNATIVE CLUBS 

THERE is no shot in golf which gives greater 
joy — I am not sure that there is any which 
affords such complete satisfaction — as a well-hit 
ball with a cleek. It is not an easy club to use. 
Many players, after trying it more or less exhaus- 
tively and patiently, give it up in despair and turn 
to an alternative club, such as the spoon or the 
baffy, to solve their difficulty of reaching the green 
from a distance rather greater than can be com- 
passed with a mid-iron. 

As a rule, they continue to carry the cleek for 
appearance' sake, since it is so essentially part of 
the equipment of a complete golfer, and sometimes 
they are tempted to put it to the test again for one 
or two shots during the round. With almost mo- 
notonous regularity, however, does one hear them 
say at the finish, "It's no good ; I can't use the cleek. 
I must stick to the baffy." 

I am all for the golfer making the game as easy 
as he can for himself by the judicious selection of 
clubs. To suggest that he ought to persist with a 
31 



82 THE GIST OF GOLF 

cleek with which he hardly ever hits a good shot 
would be absurd. Its use may be the indication 
of a golfer who is determined to master the game 
in the approved way, but it is not compulsory. 

All the same, the troubles that are experienced 
with it are frequently the result of disregard of 
small matters which can easily be set right. And 
it is worth while attempting to remedy them, and 
starting afresh on a course of endeavour with the 
cleek, because once you obtain with it a reasonable 
measure of confidence and certainty, there are shots 
at your command which give supreme joy in the 
playing as well as splendid results. 

You can control the ball with the cleek more 
effectively than with the alternative clubs. When 
you hit it well, you know at once just where it is 
going to pitch. With the spoon or the baffy, there 
is not quite the same sense of definiteness — the same 
certainty of a purpose achieved — from the instant 
you strike the ball. Sometimes it flies a little 
farther than you had expected; at other times, not 
quite so far. 

One important point with the cleek is to have 
a club with just a little loft on it. To be sure, 
you do not want much loft if it is to be really a 
cleek, but the virtually straight-faced clubs which 
one sees so often only accentuate the difficulties 
without producing any compensating advantage 
when the ball is hit perfectly. 

Another matter of importance is to be sure that 



HOW TO USE THE CLEEK 33 

the head of the club is not too heavy — a cause of 
many failures with it. You want a fairly thick 
blade, but it is impossible to set down any particular 
weight as being the ideal, since what suits one per- 
son may be wholly unsuited to another. It is a 
question — a vital question — which every player must 
study and settle for himself, and guidance lies in 
the "feel" of the club when he is swinging it. 

I have wielded plenty of cleeks which have pro- 
voked at once a feeling of dragging at the arms 
during the swing. That is a sure sign of unsuit- 
ability; yet thousands of golfers go on using such 
cleeks. The last one I made for myself presented 
a little trouble directly I took it on to the course. 
In the shop it seemed perfect, but I knew there 
was something wrong with it from the moment I 
started to play. A little practice convinced me that 
it was too heavy, so I filed a bit off the toe. With 
its weight reduced, the cleek realised my expecta- 
tions. 

That is an indication of the small change you 
may make in a club, and produce from it big re- 
sults. It is a factor of the kind — there are many 
like it — to which a professional is always paying 
attention, because his livelihood depends in a con- 
siderable measure on his playing ability, but which 
amateurs are apt to ignore. If you know you are 
hitting the ball well — and instinctively you are 
usually guided to a right judgment on this question 
— and yet the shots are not coming off, then the 



34 THE GIST OF GOLF 

chances are that there is something wrong with 
the club. 

My experience is that no club is so liable to 
possess defects as the cleek. That, I believe, is 
why many people abandon hope of mastering it. 
In many instances they have never had a cleek 
answering to their requirements, so that they have 
had no real opportunity of making the best use of 
one of the most valuable types of clubs ever devised. 

The most common defect is for the toe to possess 
too much weight. The result is that the club drags 
at you as you swing it. You may not be conscious 
of this circumstance, but the fact is that the toe 
of the club is pulling at you all the while, and having 
just sufficient effect on your swing to spoil the shot. 
It takes very little to do that; the face of the cleek 
has to be out of position in only an infinitely small 
degree at the impact for the shot to be ruined. 

You cannot always trust the impression t^at seizes 
you when you obtain a cleek-head which has no 
shaft on it. Sometimes it seems just the thing 
for which you have been searching for years — until 
you have a shaft fitted on it, and then it suddenly 
loses all its charm, usually through the sudden 
acquirement of a measure of heaviness which had 
not seemed previously to exist. 

The forging of cleek-heads is an important and 
specialised industry. There are some firms who 
produce nothing but cleek-heads. In some cases, 
however, I fear that the work is not so well done 



HOW TO USE THE CLEEK 35 

as it might be, and as the cleek, more, perhaps, 
than any other club, must be of perfect construc- 
tion and adaptability to its owner, small deficiencies 
count for a lot — including, I dare say, the frequency 
of that remark, "I simply can't use a cleek." 

Very much do I miss my old cleek, with its 
stumpy, thick-set head. It was a Carruthers club, 
and a thing of joy to me. I used it for years; 
somehow its weight seemed to be ideally distributed 
— and concentrated — in that stumpy head. I could 
"push" the ball very far and very low with it, and 
know from the moment I hit the ball exactly 
where it was going to pitch. You never have quite 
that pleasure with a lofting shot. You may play 
it well, but it lacks the exhilaration of the low- 
flying stroke with the cleek, in which you strike 
the ball boldly and strongly, and seem somehow to 
have it on a bit of string all the while, so that, as 
it nears its objective, its velocity fades away and 
it drops lifeless beside the hole. 

That is golf in all its glory. It is the strong 
wine of the game, and I say in all sincerity, that 
the person who has not experienced it knows not 
the pinnacle of pleasure to which this wonderful 
pastime can raise its devotee. 

It is better, perhaps, to pay your homage to the 
cleek before you reach the sere and yellow of life. 
It calls for a fine confidence, a suppleness of the 
muscles, and a trueness of hitting that are not given 
to all of us in our later years. But it is never too 



56 THE GIST OF GOLF 

late to try and master it. There are times when 
the system seems perfectly attuned to it. It came 
back to me in a very gratifying degree in 1920, 
when, at fifty, I was playing my cleek shots pretty 
well — if not, indeed quite as well — as in 1898 and 
1899, when I really could hit a ball with any club. 

I would ask the reader who wishes to make a 
good friend of a good cleek, first to digest the prin- 
ciples of grip and swing that I have put forward 
in the advice on driving. Once you have taken up 
your position, you need not be conscious of trying 
to do anything very different with the cleek from 
the procedure which you follow when playing a 
full shot with a wooden club. The grip; keeping 
the head still; the importance of giving the club- 
head its start with a half-turn of the left wrist, so 
that it leads the operation, with the arras following, 
and the body then screwing round at the hips so as 
to avoid a sway — all these points apply as much to 
the ordinary cleek shot as to the driver shot. Only, 
as the clubs are of different length and construction, 
a slight difference in the stance is necessary. 

In the ordinary way, the cleek is two or three 
inches shorter than the driver or brassie. Conse- 
quently, you must stand a little nearer to the ball, 
so as to play the shot comfortably. I am not sure 
that it is wise to set down distances in inches and 
fractions of inches. I have experimented a good 
deal with my own stance. With sand on the ground 
to mark the position of my feet, I have played half 



HOW TO USE THE CLEEK 37 

a dozen shots of exactly the same kind at intervals 
so short as only to give me time to step a yard away 
from the position and return to it. No two stances 
have been precisely the same, although the varia- 
tions have been so slight as to be negligible. 

What the golfer must do is to develop an instinct 
for the right stance — an instinct born of practice 
and experience. If I give some measurements now, 
I would ask you to take them as examples of a gen- 
eral principle — ^not necessarily to be observed to the 
last quarter of an inch. Much must depend upon 
the build of the player. 

For a full drive, I stand fairly open, with the 
right foot about 6 inches in advance of the left. 
For an ordinary cleek shot — not the low-flying, 
back-spin shot, which is a difficult one, and can be 
described later — my right foot is only about 2^ 
inches in advance of the left. And, in addition 
to standing squarer, I am considerably nearer to 
the ball. 

Let us suppose we have the ball in position, with 
a line extending on either side of it, indicating the 
line which the shot is to take. For a drive, the 
toes of my left foot — turned appreciably outwards — 
are 33 inches from that line. The right foot — at 
right angles to the line — is 26^ inches from it. 
For an ordinary cleek shot, my left foot — ^turned 
outwards in about the same degree — is 24 inches 
from the line, and the right is 21^^ inches from it. 
In short, I have closed in on the ball to the extent 



S8 THE GIST OF GOLF 

of about 9 inches with the left foot and 5 inches 
with the right. I am that much nearer to it. It is 
a lot, and in an approximate measure, the differ- 
ence must be observed if the shot is to be a good 
one. 

One sees people standing in all sorts of ways 
for strokes with the cleek. It is small wonder 
that many of them fail. Some are straddle-legged, 
and so far from the ball that they can only sweep 
the club round at it like a man mowing grass with 
a scythe. Some stand far too near, with the result 
that they are too cramped to play the shot effec- 
tively. A golden rule to remember is that the golfer 
should stand just near enough to ground the entire 
sole of the club from toe to heel comfortably on the 
turf during the address, without having to strain 
forward to do it or tuck his arms into his body in 
the process. But — the cleek being two or three 
inches shorter than the driver — ^you must be con- 
siderably nearer to the ball than for the full bang 
with the wooden clubs. Only in that way can you 
control the club perfectly, and produce that upright, 
concise swing which is an essential of success with 
the cleek. 

The feet are drawn a little closer together in their 
relation to one another, as well as nearer to the 
ball. The arms should not be allowed to touch the 
body, but if you stretch them forward, you are sure 
to lose your balance. They must have just nice 
room to swing through comfortably as the club de- 



HOW TO USE THE CLEEK 39 

scends. The result of all this must be a shorter 
and more upright swing than is produced with 
the driver. It is more concise, more incisive a 
stroke. 

In ordinary circumstances, I would say: Never 
practise a full swing with the cleek. The most 
effective shot of all — ^because it lends itself best 
to complete control — is that made with a half- 
swing. A three-quarter swing may be tried when 
there is need to get a little bit extra out of the shot, 
but a full swing is wholly inconsistent with the 
build of the club and the way in which we stand in 
the use of it. 

It is as well to grip just a little more tightly 
with the cleek than with the driver. When you 
are hitting a ball from the tee, there is little likeli- 
hood of the club coming into contact with the 
ground. At least, it is an atrociously bad shot 
from a tee that finds the club digging into the turf. 
In playing a cleek shot through the green, however, 
the ball has to be lifted from the turf, and although 
the proper way is to take it cleanly, only just graz- 
ing the soil, mis judgment to the extent of an in- 
finitesimal fraction of an Inch may cause the club- 
head to catch in the ground and turn in the hands. 
Consequently, while I am all in favour of a light 
grip for golf — a finger grip which keeps the club 
steady without allowing the palms to hold it like 
grim death — I am ready to admit that a slightly 
firmer grip may be adopted for the cleek. But I 



40 THE GIST OF GOLF 

am far from agreeing with those who say that the 
hold should be a really tight one. 

This policy of the clasping, clutching hand is not 
good for any shot in the game save, perhaps, 
when the ball is buried in a sand bunker and you 
are merely trying to howk it out a few yards by 
creating a wholesale disturbance in the sand behhid 
the ball. In the ordinary way, the tight grip creates 
a tautening of all the muscles in the body, and 
when the player is in that condition, the chances 
of executing a perfect stroke are remote. The 
golfer's muscles should be at once healthy and 
supple — like a boxer's. When they are encouraged 
to develop hardness and size — like a weight-lifter's 
— they retard the ease and quickness of hitting 
which count for so much at the instant of the im- 
pact. It is quite sufficient to grip a little tighter 
with the thumbs and forefingers. They will prove 
sufficient to keep the club-head in position. The 
other fingers may be left to look after themselves 
in the matter of the strength that they apply. They 
are quite powerful enough — remember, for instance, 
how strongly you can clutch anything with the little 
finger alone — without being goaded to do their ut- 
most in the grip. 

I have found it a good plan with the cleek to 
aim at a spot half an inch or even an inch behind 
the ball. You know the little gap that you see 
when you ground the club in the address prepara- 
tory to playing the shot. Very likely you put the 



HOW TO USE THE CLEEK 41 

cleek down half an inch behind the ball. Well, 
that is the place on which to focus your vision — not 
the ball itself. Then you are more likely to strike 
it cleanly instead of topping it — ^that very common 
fault with the cleek. 

It is a club with which you must hit unfalteringly. 
That, indeed, is true of any implement in the 
golfer's kit, for to try and regulate the strength of 
the shot at the instant of impact is nearly sure 
to be fatal. No matter what the club you are 
using, once you have reached the stage when you 
feel that the up-swing should stop and have started 
to come down, then you have laid the foundation of 
the shot for better or for worse, and you must go 
through with it; the pace of the club-head increasing 
as it nears the ball so that you are ever conscious 
that it is leading — that it is having its own way — 
and that you are merely guiding it, content to let 
it hit the ball with all the vim that it has gathered 
during the down-swing. 

I mention the point particularly in connection 
with the cleek, because it is, I think, the club which 
more than any other tempts a lot of players to try 
and regulate the strength of the shot at the impact. 
That may be because they have not enough faith 
in themselves. They have just a little fear of a 
club with an almost straight face, and feel that 
they ought to make sure of striking the ball accu- 
rately. To think of that just before the impact is 
to take pains too late in the operation. 



42 THE GIST OF GOLF 

Picture the good cleek players whom you have 
seen — Mr. John Ball, Mr. Harold Hilton, and the 
late Mr. John Garham, for instance, among the 
amateurs, and nearly every professional who has 
won an open championship — and remember the 
"nip" with which each of them has played his 
cleek shots. There has been no hesitancy, the club 
has come down at the ball with the momentum of a 
flywheel working its unimpeded easiest. 

You may — and probably will — ^be thinking hard 
as you take the club up, and even as you start to 
bring it down. You may be thinking hard at that 
moment at the top of the swing when the club is 
recovered from behind your head — a movement of 
infinitesimal duration, but great importance, since 
it directs the club-head for a brief fraction of a 
second straight back (in a line parallel with the 
line of play, only away from it) instead of for- 
ward. It is on the completion of this little but 
vital movement that the real hit begins, and it is at 
this point that you must trust to the club-head and 
let it go through with all its force. 

The strength of the shot must be governed by 
the length of the back-swing. Some players — per- 
haps it would be fair to say the majority — use the 
cleek exactly as they do the driver. If they have 
a full swing with the driver, then they have a full 
swing with the cleek. That is wrong. It does not 
suit the latter club. A certain element of flounder- 
ing nearly always asserts itself at the top of the 



HOW TO USE THE CLEEK 43 

swing — the diligent onlooker observes a semblance 
of a wobbling of the club-head there, indicative of 
its being out of control. 

The limit for the cleek should be a three-quarter 
swing — compact, well-knit, and without any trace of 
indecisiveness in it. Even that length of swing 
should only be attempted when you are a good 
player, with faith in your ability to control the club. 
The ideal is a half-swing — ^perhaps a generous half- 
swing. There is no reason why any golfer should 
fail to acquire a tolerable degree of mastery over the 
half-shot with a cleek, and it is a very valuable shot 
indeed to have in your bag. It covers a lot of 
ground without involving undue effort; it renders 
possible a measure of accurate placing of the ball 
which is not presented in quite the same degree 
by any other club in the outfit; it is a soul-satisfy- 
ing shot which begets confidence; and it paves the 
way to the playing of the best and most gratifying 
shot in the game — ^that which is generally known 
as the "push," and which causes the ball to rise 
sharply, fly in one plane and, when its strength ex- 
pires, drop lifeless beside its target, brought to its 
sudden standstill by the influence of the back-spin 
that could not assert itself earlier because of the 
supremacy of the initial velocity. 

From time to time I have recommended the mod- 
erate golfer to pin his faith to a few clubs, and I 
do not propose now to suggest a departure from 
that principle. If he focus his attention at the 



44 THE GIST OF GOLF 

start on the brassie (for tee-shots), mid-iron, 
mashie, and putter, and then add the driver, cleek, 
and niblick, he will make much more rapid progress 
than if he experiment in his foozling days with a 
variety of instruments of all shapes and lofts. 

When the writer of these hints could play golf 
considerably better than he can to-day, and cham- 
pionship winning was much less of a struggle than 
it has been in recent years, he used nothing but the 
driver, brassie, cleek, mid-iron, mashie, niblick, and 
putter. Seven clubs were ample. But to live the 
golfing life without ever taking a fancy to something 
new and strange is hardly human and when a 
player comes to be tolerably content with his doings 
with what we may call the standard set, he is 
justified in trying some of the alternative clubs that 
are produced for the benefit of individuals who 
believe in the efficacy of a change. 

So far as concerns the average golfer, I agree 
that the most difficult club to use is the cleek. 
The face of the club is shallow and almost straight, 
and unless the ball is struck absolutely accurately, 
the result is sure to be unsatisfactory. Conse- 
quently, if you feel that you will never be able 
to master it unless you have a rest from it, by all 
means resort to a substitute. The best substitute 
is a spoon or a driving mashie, and of the two, I 
recommend the former. The spoon (or the "baffy," 
as a slight variation of it is called) is, for the 
mediocre player, just about the easiest club to 



HOW TO USE THE CLEEK 45 

wield in the whole range of instruments. More- 
over, it has a venerable antiquity. It was em- 
ployed very extensively by old-time golfers at St. 
Andrews and elsewhere. In a set of ancient clubs 
you will generally come across a spoon. By no 
means, then, is it a modem subterfuge, and al- 
though for some years it has been regarded as some- 
thing of a curiosity in a bag, the cleek having come 
to be considered orthodox, I see no reason why it 
should not be used extensively. 

For several seasons I never went out without 
such a club, and never employed any with better 
effect. There are people who, whenever they write 
to me even now, ask when I am going to bring out 
the spoon again. Certainly it was not discarded 
because it ever failed me; it has merely been put 
among the reserves because I feel that the cleek, 
well used, is the proper club. 

A spoon has the loft of a mid-iron, which gives 
the player confidence in his ability to make the ball 
rise, and its broad sole is a help in the sense that 
it glides over the turf instead of digging in, as a 
cleek does, when the swing is not made quite prop- 
erly. In short, many a shot that would be, for this 
reason, a complete foozle with the cleek, meets with 
a fair measure of success when the spoon is in use. 
That you get the requisite distance in spite of the 
fact that the loft is that of a mid-iron, is the nat- 
ural outcome of the head of wood with the usual 
lead-weighting at the back. 



46 THE GIST OF GOLF 

The spoon makes the ball rise so well that it 
usually drops with very little run ; and you can "cut" 
a ball to make it fall dead more easily with this club 
than any other, with the possible exception of the 
mashie. Indeed, owing to the loft, you are apt to 
introduce a suspicion of "cut" without trying for it. 
For a full shot, the swing is the same as with a 
driver, and it is the only wooden club with which 
half and three-quarter shots can be attempted with 
safety by a moderate golfer. Of late there have 
been some signs of a revival of the popularity of the 
spoon, and the circumstance is not surprising. A 
crack player may not stand in much need of the 
club, but to the man who finds the successful hand- 
ling of the cleek an exasperating problem, it is often 
a deliverer from stress. 

If you prefer a driving mashie (or a driving iron 
as some people term it, there is really no difference 
between the two) as an alternative to the cleek, be 
sure that you select one with a little loft on the face. 
Sometimes the driving mashie is made with virtually 
no loft at all. You do not want a lot, because, in 
that case, you will not obtain the necessary dis- 
tance, but if you have none, the club is adapted for 
the use only of a champion. There are plenty of 
driving mashies with faces straighter than that of 
the average cleek, and they are a source of trouble 
rather than assistance to the medium and long 
handicap players to whom they belong. Their 
attraction is that they have a deep face which, com- 



HOW TO USE THE CLEEK 47 

pared with the narrow face of the cleek, makes them 
look simple to use, but they would be appreciably 
easier if they had a reasonable degree of loft. A 
club of this sort may be a help to the ordinary 
golfer. If he decides to place his trust in it, he 
should turn the cleek temporarily out of the bag. 
He does not want the two ; between them he would 
become confused. A first-class player does, how- 
ever, usually carry two cleeks; one practically 
straight-faced and the other slightly lofted. All 
these are clubs for long shots, and the longest of 
all is to be obtained with the straight-faced driv- 
ing mashie — when you hit the ball perfectly. But 
it is not used much nowadays. 

There are some veritable treasures among what 
are known as "mongrel" clubs — instruments with 
heads that have been hammered or evolved in some 
other way so that they present a loft and depth 
and weight that places them in no particular cate- 
gory in the standard set. Often they appeal to some 
trait in one's temperament or swing as nothing else 
could do, and I am not ashamed to admit that the 
pet of my bag was for many years a mongrel. 

It was a cross between a cleek and a mid-iron, 
and sufficiently different from either as to present 
itself in the nature of a solution to a problem when 
one could not be quite confident as to which of 
those two clubs to take. I have had it for more 
years than I like to remember, and the head long 
ago became so light from constant cleaning with 



48 THE GIST OF GOLF 

sandpaper that something had to be done to adjust 
the weight. Consequently, I had a square piece of 
steel fixed at the back. Reluctantly I have had 
to place it on the retired list because of its old age, 
but I often look at it, and wish that I could press 
it into service again. Often when I was using it, 
people said to me, "What's that funny bit stuck 
on the back of your club ?" referring to the piece of 
metal which I had affixed to it. But there was 
nothing else to be done if this mongrel was to re- 
main in service. 

And, upon my word, I would not part with it for 
any amount of money. I have had it since my early 
championships, a quarter of a century ago. The 
sole is round, and the head, while being slightly 
shorter than that of a cleek, is longer than that of 
a mid-iron. It came from America at a time, per- 
haps, when manufacturers in the United States 
had no particular idea as to the shapes, and weights, 
and sizes, that legitimate golf-clubs should assume. 
I bought it in London soon after its import, being 
impressed mainly by its oddity, and have tried many 
times to get it copied. 

Every attempt has been a failure, although I 
have now another good "mongrel." One moral of 
this little experience is that, if you have an iron 
club of which the face seems perfect but the weight 
too light, you can safely have a piece of metal added 
to the head. It is a very simple matter. 

Without doubt, the finest shot in the game — the 



HOW TO USE THE CLEEK 49 

stroke which gives the player the maximum of satis- 
faction when he has learnt how to accomplish it, 
and without a knowledge of which nobody realises 
to the full the joy that is in golf — is that which is 
colloquially called the "push'* shot. Why it pos- 
sesses this title is a matter over which we need 
not stop to inquire. As the push shot we know it, 
although there is not really any push about it, since 
it is simply an iron shot to which the greatest pos- 
sible degree of back-spin has been imparted. 

The ideal club with which to play it is the cleek, 
although, to be sure, it is practicable with the mid- 
iron, the mashie, and the niblick, and not out of 
the question with wooden clubs. There is a touch 
of the push shot about nearly everything that a 
first-class player does with any iron club, because 
its object is to invest the ball with so much ''stop" 
that its place of alightment shall be to all intents 
and purposes the place at which it pitches. There 
is no pleasure in the game like that of feeling the 
instant you have struck the ball that you have played 
this shot perfectly, so that the ball will rise quickly, 
fly in virtually one plane for the whole duration of 
its passage through the air, and then — when its ini- 
tial velocity is spent and the back-spin becomes the 
stronger influence — fall as sharply as it had risen, 
and finish with only a few yards of run. 

Naturally, it requires practice. I do not recom- 
mend it to the man who says he plays golf only for 
fun — there is really nobody quite so frolicsome as 



50 THE GIST OF GOLF 

that, although plenty of people pretend to he when 
they have been beaten by 6 and 5. Still, it is a shot 
for the earnest student of methods who wants to be 
a good player, and the club with which to practise it 
is the cleek. 

Of first importance is the stance. The player 
must stand nearer to the ball than for the ordinary 
cleek shot — he must close in on the ball to the 
extent of several inches— because his object is not 
to hit behind the ball and propel it high into the 
air, but to come down on the back of it by means 
of an upright swing which in itself necessitates this 
close stance to the ball. 

The stance must be more forward, too, than for 
the ordinary shot. When you are in the position 
of address, with the club grounded just behind the 
ball, the hands must be an inch or two in front of 
the ball. Moreover, the vision must be directed, 
not on the turf just behind the ball, but on the back 
of the ball itself. 

You see then the manner of striking the object 
for which you are shaping. You are nearer to the 
ball than before, with the hands actually in front 
of it as you prepare for the shot, and you are going 
to perform something in the nature of a straight 
up-and-down swing — as nearly that as the arms will 
allow in comfort. You are not going to permit any 
waste or exuberance in the swing; you are going 
to take it to the top of a half or three-quarter swing 
by the shortest track you know that is consistent 



HOW TO USE THE CLEEK 51 

with rhythm and ease of movement, and come down 
on the back of the ball. You are going to *'try and 
bang the back out of the ball," if one may so de- 
scribe it. Even though you are hitting it forward, 
you must be conscious that you are beating it down 
rather than lifting it up, as is the case in the ordi- 
nary shot. 

Opinions differ as to the exact part of the ball 
which is struck at the impact. Some think it is 
just below the centre; others that it is the centre 
itself. Whichever it may be, I know my feeling is 
that the top half of the face of my cleek — which 
has been tilted slightly forward in the address, as 
already described — strikes the ball above the centre, 
and that the bottom half of the club face gets under 
the ball and raises it. 

Anyway, the cause does not matter a lot. The 
effect is the main thing. 

As I have said, you want to feel that you are 
beating the ball down as the club-head goes through 
with the shot, and, as you strike, you should stiffen 
your wrists and let your body go forward a few 
inches with the club. That will help in the beat- 
ing down process, and the turf will — or should — 
be grazed just in front of the spot where the ball 
was resting. 

It may be that at first the seeker of success with 
the push shot will suffer the tribulations of topping. 
But sooner or later he will hit a good one, and then 
he will know the feel of it — never to forget it. 



THE CLEEK 

ILLUSTRATIVE CHART 




Stance and Address. — As the parallel lines on 
the mat indicate, the player is a little nearer to the ball 
than for the drive. Feet also slightly closer together, 
otherwise position similar to that for the driver. 




Beginning of Up-Swing. — Similar movement as 
that for the start of the up-swing with the driver. The 
chief point of difference is the fact that, being nearer 
to the ball, the swing is necessarily more upright. 




Top of Swing. — With the exception tnat tne 
club does not go quite so far back as for the driver, the 
position of the body at this stage should be identical 
with that for the driver. 




Beginning of Down-Swing. — The club, it will 
be noticed, has been started on the down track 
without any alteration of the pose of the body. I 
cannot too often repeat the injunction, " Keep your 
eyes on the ball throughout every stroke." 



THE CLEEK 



%i 




Finish of Swing. — The shaft of the club at the 
finish of the swing should be parallel with the ground. 
It is important to remember this, as by doing so it 
checks the frequent error of " going through" too far 
with this club. 



Chapter III: HOW TO USE THE 
MID-IRON 

WITH SOME HINTS ON DIFFERENT 
SHOTS FOR DIFFERENT LIES 



Chapter III 
HOW TO USE THE MID-IRON 

WITH SOME HINTS ON DIFP'ERENT SHOTS 
FOR DIFFERENT LIES 

THE mid-iron is, without doubt, the handiest 
dub in the golfer's kit, and, on the whole, 
the easiest to use. If I had to choose one club — 
and one only — with which to play a complete round, 
I would select unhesitatingly my mid-iron. 

It is constantly coming in useful, and it is even 
more valuable to the moderate golfer than to the 
champion, although I can hardly imagine what any 
of us would do without it. Just remember how 
often you find yourself between 120 to 170 yards 
from the hole, which is roughly the mid-iron range. 
It happens repeatedly; at many holes after a good 
drive, and at many others after a foozle which has 
left you farther from the green than you should be 
as the result of two shots. A lot of people take 
a mashie and, with a full swing, hit for all they 
are worth. If only they would repose their faith 
in the mid-iron and play a nice, easy, well-controlled 
shot with it, they would fare very much better. 

It is a club that frequently comes splendidly to 
55 



56 THE GIST OF GOLF 

the rescue when the lie of the ball is unfavourable, 
when you are in long grass not quite lank and for- 
midable enough to justify the use of a niblick, and 
when you find your ball sitting up — as you do 
sometimes — in a bunker and not too near the face 
of the hazard. It is a club with a face lofted in 
just that degree which makes you feel sure of 
getting the ball up with it, and the confidence thus 
begotten is priceless. Moreover, you know that you 
can obtain a considerable distance with it. 

I suppose it is used more often than any other 
club for the tee-shots to short holes — the ever-in- 
creasing numbers of short holes, of which there are 
four or five on a good many modern greens. In 
winter time, when the clay courses are soft and 
sticky, it is invaluable for the shots through the 
green. A mistake that thousands of golfers make 
under such conditions is that they try to hit a full 
shot with a brassie or a nearly straight-faced iron 
club, such as a cleek or a driving mashie, even 
though they know they must follow it up with a 
mashie pitch, however well they may accomplish 
the full bang. 

In point of fact, they seldom do accomplish it 
well; the ball lies too closely to the soft turf for 
such a shot to be practicable in many instances. 
They would find themselves much better off in the 
end if they were to substitute two mid-iron shots 
for their ideal of a brassie shot and a mashie chip. 
I know from experience that the ideal has a way 



HOW TO USE THE MID-IRON 57 

of ending in sorrow on heavy clay courses, where 
the brassie simply will not pick the ball up cleanly 
from the muddy ground. 

As a rule the mid-iron is about two inches shorter 
in the shaft than the cleek. It is so essentially a 
standard type of club — with just that degree of loft 
that makes a club look inviting as well as business- 
like, and a depth of face that also helps in the good 
work of promoting confidence — that one mid-iron is 
in appearance very like another. It is for every 
player to find for himself the mid-iron that suits 
him; he can usually obtain a good deal of help in 
this matter by consulting the professional of his 
club, who knows his stance and any other little in- 
dividualities that his golf may possess. Once he 
has secured the mid-iron that he likes, every five 
minutes that he spends practising with it will be 
time well spent. 

As the shaft of the club is shorter than that of 
the cleek, naturally it is necessary to stand nearer 
to the ball than for a cleek shot. This is an obvious 
— though often neglected — point. The various 
lengths of shafts in the golf equipment are regu- 
lated by a well-thought-out regard for the degree 
of uprightness with which each club in the set can 
be swung to the best advantage, and the golfer 
should remember that for every inch that is lacking 
in the length of the shaft he must be a little nearer 
to the ball during the address, so as not to strain 
forward to reach it. 



58 THE GIST OF GOLF 

In my own case, the right foot is about eight 
inches nearer to the ball than for a cleek shot, 
and the left foot about three inches nearer. Thus 
my stance is more open — that is, the body is turned 
more towards the hole — ^and the feet are also closer 
together. This opening of the stance as you draw 
nearer to the ball facilitates the accomplishment of 
the swing for iron clubs. The swing becomes — or 
should become — more upright the shorter the dis- 
tance that you have to make the ball travel, and the 
greater the need that exists for the perfect control 
of the length of the shot. 

Having adapted your stance to the change of 
club, you should swing with the iron just as you 
do with the cleek and, indeed, even the driver, 
although naturally you will not swing so far back 
as with the latter — a longer club with which you 
stand so very much farther from the ball. 

The mid-iron does its best work, I think, when 
it is played with a half-swing. The distance that 
it will make the ball travel depends upon the length 
of the up-swing and the consequent pace at which 
the club-head is travelling as it comes down and 
strikes the ball; but in practice it is best to adopt 
the half -swing. If you want to extend it to a three- 
quarter swing in playing a later shot, do so, but I 
am a very profound disbeliever in straining to get 
the last possible yard out of a club of restricted 
range. I would rather take a club that is meant 
to make the ball travel farther — for instance, a cleek 



HOW TO USE THE MID-IRON 59 

or a spoon — and play a comfortable shot with that 
than try to force the mid-iron to attain the very 
limit of its capacity. 

It is generally agreed that professionals are better 
players than amateurs. Especially is this the case 
in Britain. Not since 1897 has an amateur won 
the British open championship, although Mr. R. H. 
Wethered was very near to it this year. It is the 
truth, however, that as a body first-class amateurs 
do not play so well as first-class professionals. 

What is the reason? Simply, I think, that they 
do not play their iron shots so well as their prede- 
cessors, mainly because they have made a fetish of 
full swinging with iron clubs — that is, selecting the 
implement with which they can just secure the dis- 
tance if they hit with all their might. That way 
lies loss of control. It stands for the biggest error 
in the whole gamut of golf tactics — making hard 
work of the game instead of taking it easily and 
securing better results for the absence of neck-or- 
nothing endeavour. 

When I had my baptism of championship thrills 
at Prestwick in 1893, there were three amateurs 
in the first nine, Mr. J. E. Laidlay gaining second 
place, two strokes behind the winner, Willie Auch- 
terlonie. That was a fairly common kind of occur- 
rence. It has happened at least once since that 
no amateur has so much as survived the qualifying 
rounds of the championship. 

Certainly the main difference does not lie in 



60 THE GIST OF GOLF 

putting. I should say that amateurs are better put- 
ters than professionals — and ought to be. Putting 
is a matter not only of skill. It is a trial of nerves. 
The "jumps" that I have had in my right arm when 
I have been faced by four- foot putts, on the holing 
or missing of which has depended at least some 
measure of my reputation as an efficient profes- 
sional ! 

There was profound truth in the remark that 
Alexander Herd made to an amateur who had 
nearly beaten him by getting down six long putts 
in a round. "Mon!" he said at the finish, "ye 
wouldna' putt like that if ye had to do it for a 
living." 

Nor is it in driving that the professional asserts 
definite superiority, although I think that, on the 
whole, he is a little the straighter and steadier from 
the tee — that he hits the smaller number of crooked 
drives. It is in the iron shots of all lengths up to 
the hole that the main difference is to be found. 

The professional has discovered — and in Britain 
he began to discover it a good many years ago — 
that the most successful way to play golf is the 
easiest way. When he has an iron shot to accom- 
plish, he selects for the purpose the club that will 
enable him to achieve it with the minimum of effort. 
He does not take one with which he will have to 
execute a full swing and force for all he is worth 
just to reach the green — even assuming that he hits 
the ball truly in such desperate circumstances. In- 



HOW TO USE THE MID-IRON 61 

stead, he chooses a club of longer range, plays a 
half or three-quarter shot over which he has com- 
plete control all the while, and puts his ball com- 
fortably on to the green. 

The number of amateurs one sees making the 
game as hard as they can possibly make it for them- 
selves, by choosing an iron club which will call for 
an enormous effort if they are to obtain the neces- 
sary carry, is astounding. I think that, in a very 
large measure, this tendency is born of a pardon- 
able but not profitable form of vainglory. There 
are a great many amateurs who like to say of this, 
that, or the other hole (to which the professional 
plays a drive and an iron), "I got up there to-day 
with a drive and a mashie.*' 

Well, it may be exhilarating golf — when it comes 
oflf — and the amateur is entitled to pursue the meth- 
ods that give him the greatest joy. But it is not 
the kind of golf that succeeds in the end. The rea- 
son that amateurs are inferior to professionals as 
iron-shot players is that the former so often under- 
club themselves in their happy-hearted desire of 
being able to announce triumphantly that they have 
accomplished a shot of 160 yards with a mashie or 
a jigger. It sounds exciting, but it means that they 
have been overswinging, and that is bound to lead 
to the golfing grave more often than to golfing glory. 

Sometimes it is said that the estimates of a few 
years ago as to the distances that should be 
attempted with a mashie are wo fully below the 



62 THE GIST OF GOLF 

mark — that nowadays it is easy to get 150 yards 
with such a club. And you would think so, watch- 
ing the number of people who attempt it. At least, 
you would think so until you counted the cost in 
unsuccessful shots. I always contend that, in nor- 
mal circumstances, a golfer is ill-advised in taking 
his mashie at a greater distance than about 110 
yards; that beyond such a range he fares better 
when he plays an easy shot with a mid-iron. And 
the professional golfer knows it. That is why he 
excels with the iron clubs, for the principle is the 
same in all the questions of choice of clubs for iron 
shots. 

Occasionally these efforts to do mighty things 
with iron clubs adapted for sober treatment meet 
with success for a whole round. But the magic 
does not extend to a second round. In a recent open 
amateur tournament in Britain, a man of fairly 
long handicap won the qualifying competition easily, 
with a very low net score, by using his favourite 
jigger at every conceivable distance within 160 yards 
of the green. He adopted the same policy in the 
first round of the match stages and lost nearly every 
hole. 

I noticed that in the Oxford and Cambridge 
match of 1920 at Sunningdale, Mr. C. J. H. Tolley 
used his mashie-niblick for the second shots to the 
seventeenth and eighteenth holes. Far though he 
may have driven at these excellent two-shot holes, 



HOW TO USE THE MID-IRON 63 

and admirably as the mashie-niblick may have 
served him on this occasion, I am certain that his 
tactics would fail in the aggregate if he adopted 
them every time in a dozen rounds. If I had been 
in his place, I would have taken a mid-iron and 
played the shot in comfort. 

Even if two out of every three mighty swipes 
with iron clubs come off, they would not represent 
the best golf, because you would have done just as 
well with less forceful shots played with clubs of 
longer range — and probably the third shot would 
have come off too. 

If you keep within yourself with the iron clubs, 
you have a chance of learning the way to apply 
back-spin. You have no chance of doing this when 
you are hitting with all your might. Often it is 
said that professionals are better iron players than 
amateurs, because the former can invest the ball 
with back-spin and make it stop within reasonable 
distance of where it pitches. That is only possible 
for the reason that the professionals do not over- 
swing ; that they have control over the club through- 
out the movement. 

When you are forcing an iron shot, you need an 
absolutely perfect lie. Sometimes, even on the most 
beautifully cut fairway, you detect just behind the 
ball a trifling extra growth of grass — just a long, 
fat bunch of grass, perhaps imperceptible to the 
crowd. If you are likely to come into contact with 



64> THE GIST OF GOLF 

this growth in swinging through to the ball, do not 
attempt to force the shot. Often it is sufficient to 
spoil the effort. 

Among amateurs, the best iron players I have 
seen are Mr. Charles Evans in America, and Mr. 
Hilton, Mr. John Ball, Mr. Robert Maxwell, and 
Mr. R. H. Wethered in Britain. They avoid the 
fatal error of underclubbing themselves; particu- 
larly is this noticeable at short holes, where the test 
of the iron shots stands out in bold relief. Why it 
is that many an amateur who cannot be sure of 
driving 200 yards with a wooden club, will insist 
upon taking a cleek and forcing for all he is worth 
at a hole of 195 yards — simply because it is a hole 
of that length — is one of the little mysteries of golf. 
And yet it is exactly his policy with all the iron 
clubs. 

Where you know it will need a full swing with 
a mashie to achieve a certain distance, leave the 
mashie alone, and take your mid-iron. 

If already you have paid me the compliment of 
reading my chapters on how to use the driver and 
the cleek, you know all I can say as to how to grip 
and swing the mid-iron — for the last-mentioned 
club calls for no innovation, save that you get a 
little nearer to the ball in the address. 

Personally, I stand "open" in about this degree: 
Drawing a line through the ball along the intended 
line of flight, my left foot — pointing outwards — is 
20 inches from that line. My right foot — square 



HOW TO USE THE MID-IRON 65 

to the line — is 13 inches from it. Thus the right 
foot is 7 inches in front of the left, which means 
that the body is turned appreciably towards the 
hole. Owing to the left foot pointing outwards, the 
ball is only about 3 inches inside the left heel. This 
is the stance for any ordinary mid-iron shot. 

In this chapter it is appropriate to deal with the 
different kinds of "lies" that a golfer may encounter 
in the course of his round. When he is lying un- 
favourably and wants to obtain as much length as 
possible, the chances are that he will take his mid- 
iron. With its generous loft and the confidence 
that it inspires, the club is admirably adapted to the 
purpose of lifting the ball from little indentations in 
the turf and other perplexing places. 

Directly we have hit a shot and set forward in 
the direction of the ball, we start to wonder in what 
manner of lie we shall find it. Will it be cupped, 
or sitting up, or hanging, or on an incline? There 
is no other game in which these questions arise, and 
it is because golf has so much of the primitive about 
it, in spite of all the science that is applied to it, 
that it has a fascination which is peculiar among 
pastimes. We know when we have struck a shot 
well, and we feel that the ball ought to be lying 
favourably, but there is always the chance that we 
shall have to take some untoward condition into 
account. Similarly, from an indifferent shot, we 
may find the situation of the ball unexpectedly 
pleasant. 



66 THE GIST OF GOLF 

In the course of a round, the luck in this respect 
is generally fairly equally divided, and I have never 
heard of a good golfer losing a match or a medal 
competition through sheer misfortune in the matter 
of his lies. But I dare say that many a person, 
playing most of his shots quite well enough to win, 
has been beaten because of lack of knowledge as to 
how to act in certain situations. Be it remembered 
that when the ball is lying otherwise than well 
poised on a level piece of turf, there is need for con- 
sideration as to what special steps shall be taken 
to deal with it. 

That is just what the average player does not ap- 
preciate. Only when his ball is in a bunker, or a 
ditch, does he realise that his stance and manner of 
hitting must differ from the ordinary if he is to get 
well away. There are little traps for the unwary 
at many parts of the course. They are found in the 
variety of lies that every golfer encounters on a 
course that is not so flat and featureless as to be 
dull. 

There is much difference of opinion as to the best 
way to stand for uphill and hanging lies. Many 
people do not bother at all about the matter (they 
just take up their ordinary stance), but it is certain 
that when a ball is on a slope, the stroke needs to 
be tackled in a manner rather different from the 
customary. I know good golfers who say that when 
the ball is hanging — that is to say, resting on a 



HOW TO USE THE MID-IRON 67 

downhill slope — you should stand rather more be- 
hind the ball than usual, with most of the weight 
on the right leg, and the body turned well towards 
the hole, so as to secure the effect of a cut shot. 
Their argument is, that if you stand with the ball 
mid-way between your feet, the slope will carry 
your weight forward as you bring the club down, 
with the result that you will smother the ball. 

This may be all very well for a short shot with a 
mashie, but when it is necessary to hit a long shot 
with an iron, I believe in standing a trifle more 
forward than usual. In fact, it is a safe rule in all 
circumstances. When your body is behind the ball, 
where the ground is higher, there is a very con- 
siderable chance of the club coming into contact with 
this part of the slope before it reaches the ball, and 
that can only spell ruination to the shot. When you 
stand a trifle in front, there is far less likelihood of 
hitting the turf behind the ball, although I agree 
that it is good to be conscious of having a little 
more weight than usual on the right leg in order to 
avoid losing the balance at the time of impact. 

For an uphill lie, my own method is to stand a 
little more behind the ball than in the ordinary way, 
so as to avoid digging into the turf in front as the 
ball is hit. It is easy to come into contact with this 
rising ground. You are at the bottom of the arc of 
the swing at the impact, and if you stand forward, 
as some people do for an uphill lie, the position of 



68 THE GIST OF GOLF 

the body will tend to keep the club-head low for a 
fraction of a second — long enough, at any rate, to 
catch the ground. 

It is very interesting to play on a course where 
one hardly ever has the same kind of stance for 
two shots in succession. A golfer who thinks can 
always adjust his stance to the situation; the chief 
points to remember are, as I have already stated, to 
stand behind the ball for an uphill lie and forward 
for a hanging lie. Of British championship courses. 
Deal gives a far bigger variety of stances than any 
other, but it is recognised as one of the fairest tests 
of golf in the land. 

Its undulations are not quite so numerous as 
those of the Briad Hills course at Edinburgh, which 
gave Andrew Kirkaldy, the St. Andrews profes- 
sional, very curiously to think on the occasion of 
his first visit to it. Half-way round somebody 
asked him how he was playing. "Playing?" he 
echoed. "How d'ye think I should be playing? 
I'm no' a goat !" Report says that in the afternoon 
Kirkaldy took out with him a large slab of turf in 
order to level up some of the stances. 

I do not believe that; but I do remember a very 
cute dodge to which he resorted when eight of us 
took part in a tournament on Lord Dudley's private 
course at Witley Court, in Worcester. It was mid- 
winter, and snow lay several inches deep upon the 
ground. Every ball became as slippery as slippery 
could be. Kirkaldy was then instructor to Lord 



HOW TO USE THE MID-IRON 69 

Dudley, and wanted to do especially well in this 
competition — as he did — so he hit upon the idea of 
anointing his caddie's hair with oil and rubbing the 
ball into his faithful henchman's locks before play- 
ing every hole. That scheme undoubtedly saved 
him a lot of strokes. 

A cuppy lie calls for at least a few moments'* con- 
sideration, since there are two ways in which the 
shot may be tackled. When the ball is only slightly 
cupped, it is just as easy to cut through the turf 
behind it in order to get at the object as to make 
a direct stroke at it. This shot, be it said, can be 
played with a brassie, although many golfers im- 
agine that when the ball is in even the slightest 
indentation, it is useless to think of using a wooden 
club. All that is necessary is to aim an inch or two 
behind the ball, the distance in the rear being gov- 
erned by the player's instinctive estimate as to the 
measure of the cup's edge which he needs to cut 
away in order to get at the ball. 

Of course it is hopeless to try and slice off a large 
chunk of turf, nor would I suggest to the golfer 
that he should do such a thing, even if it were 
profitable to him. Sufficient divots are raised in the 
ordinary way without anybody advising the extrac- 
tion of more ; and as moderate players are far more 
destructive in this respect than good golfers, I want 
to emphasise that nothing in the nature of an up- 
lifting of substantial lumps of earth is advised. 

It is a pity that the world of caddying is not full 



70 THE GIST OF GOLF 

of zealots with tongues so caustic as that of a man 
whom I once heard addressing his employer on a 
London course. 

"Did I hear you say you came from Australia?" 
he asked of the player, who had howked up about 
a dozen huge divots in a few holes. 

*'Yes," was the reply, "I'm from down under." 

"Well," said the caddie, "if you go on like this, 
you'll soon be home." 

It would be sacrilegious to encourage this kind of 
despoilment, but it is as well that golfers should 
know the possibilities of cutting through the top of 
the turf (just slicing the grass off where it pro- 
trudes from the ground) when the ball is slightly 
cupped. It is no use trying to nip right into the 
cup with a brassie ; the ball will not rise far enough 
to go a considerable distance. But the club in ques- 
tion can be taken if you aim an inch or a little more 
behind the ball, and go through the top roots of the 
grass. 

When the cup is serious, you naturally select an 
iron club, and then it is a question whether you 
should cut through the turf behind the ball or 
"stab" at the ball by coming down on to the back 
of it just below its centre and stopping the club at 
the impact. It depends on which method you fancy. 
One thing is certain : If the lie is uphill as well as 
cuppy, you must stab, because if you try to go 
through, the rising ground in front will check the 
club and wreck the shot. 



HOW TO USE THE MID-IRON 71 

To effect the stab, which is virtually a shot that 
brings the blade of the iron down between the back 
of the cup and the ball, and so causes the latter to 
rise, it is desirable to practise a fairly relaxed grip. 
You have to make the ball spring up, and you can- 
not do that if you hold very tightly. It is just at the 
impact that the grip must ease; prior to that you 
can hold with the ordinary firmness. If you tr)'- the 
shot, and imbue your mind with the principles of the 
stab that comes down behind the ball and stops at 
the impact, you will find that naturally you loosen 
your wrists as you hit. If you were not to do so, 
you would break the shaft. Probably it is the sub- 
conscious realisation of this fact that produces the 
relaxation. 



THE MID-IRON 

ILLUSTRATIVE CHART 



r"~T"'"T-'':T''ir«j;?:y^ 




Stance and Address. — Still a little nearer to the 
ball, and feet a trifle closer than for the cleek. 
Observe, by comparing the chalk lines on the mat in 
the driver and cleek lessons, the extent to which the 
feet have moved forward. 




Beginning of the Up-Swing. — The left knee 
has bent slightly less than for the cleek. The reason 
for this is the fact that the mid-*ron, being the shorter 
club entails a more upright swing. 




Top of Swing. — Notice that it is no more than a 
three-quarter swing. The turn of the body has been 
the same as for the previous shots, but the club has 
not gone back so far, on account of the fact that the 
mid-iron naturally accommodates itself best to this 
length of swing. 




U- ■ . ■■■■ ■ - ■.-•'-■ 

Beginning of Down-Swing. — This is very 
similar to the hke position when using the cleek. 
The club has started down without the body turning. 



THE MID-IRON 




JB'iNibH OF Swing — An easy position. There 
has been no attempt at slogging. The player is now 
drawing nearer to the hole, and is concerning him- 
self chiefly about accuracy of distance. Not quite so 
full a finish as for the cleek. 



Chapter IV: HOW TO USE THE 
NIBLICK 

SOME AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 



Chapter IV 
HOW TO USE THE NIBLICK 

SOME AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOTES 

THERE is a method of playing a shot out of a 
bunker which, in a general sense, is better 
than any other, but let me straightway warn the 
golfer against relying upon one manner, and one 
only, of recovering from places of tribulation on the 
links. It is an all too common error. 

To a large extent every problem under this head 
has to be considered on its own merits. Much must 
be governed by the stance which circumstances force 
the player to adopt, and by the question as to 
whether he can afford to lose a stroke or ought to 
make a desperate effort to achieve that which is 
very difficult. On broad lines, however, it is possi- 
ble to indicate the right and wrong ways of tackling 
the average situation in a hazard, and all that I 
would ask the golfer to remember is that, inasmuch 
as he has to adapt himself to the needs of the mo- 
ment, he ought not to depend upon one stereotyped 
method of executing a bunker shot. As a rule, the 
position is one that calls for a choice from among 
several plans of action. 

75 



76 THE GIST OF GOLF 

In America the sand in bunkers is usually much 
harder than it is in Britain. The heat of the sun 
bakes the soil, and, as a consequence, the ball gen- 
erally sits up fairly well, whereas at home it sinks 
into the sand and is often half-buried. 

These two sets of conditions call for different 
tactics. It has been remarked by some critics that 
when American golfers play in Britain, they do not 
show so much ability in recovering from bunkers 
as in the other shots of the game, and the reason is, 
I suppose, that when they tackle an English or 
Scottish seaside course, the fine, loose nature of the 
sand is something new to them. They try to pick 
the ball up cleanly, which is a sheer impossibility 
when the bottom of the ball is nestling well down 
in the sand. 

In Britain we have both sets of conditions. The 
sand is usually hard inland and loose by the sea. 
When the ball is sitting up on a firm surface, and 
a good deal of ground has to be covered, the thing 
to do — unless the position is very close to the face 
of the hazard — is to hit cleanly. But the shot is not 
the ordinary lifting one, nor is it a scoop, which is 
about the worst way imaginable of trying to get out 
of a bunker. It is a stroke made by addressing the 
ball with the hands a fraction of an inch in front 
of it, taking the club up as nearly straight as is hu- 
manly possible instead of after the manner of the 
driving swing, and aiming at the back of the ball — 
not even a thousandth jDart of an inch behind it. 



HOW TO USE THE NIBLICK 77 

This principle will make it rise sharply and carry a 
considerable distance; it is the method adopted by 
every British professional of note, and it is exactly 
suited to the conditions which are common in in- 
land bunkers. 

"Don't be greedy in a hazard" is perhaps as good 
a piece of advice as any that can be given in regard 
to the accomplishment of recovery shots. There are 
occasions when one has to make a death-or-glory 
effort, but in ordinary circumstances it is safest, in 
either a match or a medal round, to look for the 
easiest way out and trust to making up the lost 
stroke at a later stage. Most of us have paid the 
penalty at some time or other of a vaulting ambi- 
tion to do something wonderful in a bunker. 

My unhappiest experience in this respect was in 
a professional tournament at Musselburgh a good 
many years ago. At the fourth hole, a short one, I 
was bunkered near the green. I tried to play a 
clever shot out with my mashie (very foolishly I 
carried no niblick in those days), with the result 
that I took three shots in the hazard. Then I went 
on to beach, from which place I found my way back 
into the bunker in which I had had all the trouble. 

The hole cost me 9, and I shall never forget the 
look of withering scorn on the face of my caddie as 
he said when the ball ultimately went down : "Ye'U 
have a niblick this afternoon, or I'll no* carry for 
ye." During the luncheon interval he went off to 
obtain a niblick. He came back exceedingly in- 



78 THE GIST OF GOLF 

toxicated, but bearing the instrument which he had 
sworn to make me use. As I was lucky enough to 
win the tournament in spite of my morning mishap, 
he felt well repaid for his pains and even perhaps 
for his aching head on the following morning. 

When a ball is lying heavily in sand or other soft 
substance, then undoubtedly the only way to dis- 
lodge it is to aim behind it, so that the club does 
not actually come into contact with the ball at all, 
but forces it out of its ensconced position by the 
violent disturbance of the soil behind the object. 
This is also a means of escape when the ball is 
lying cleanly but so near to the face of the hazard 
that to play it out by direct impact with the club is 
almost impossible. Here, however, the player will 
have to be governed by circumstances. It may pay 
him better in a medal round, or when he has a 
stroke up his sleeve in a match, to play to the side 
or even back — anything so long as he makes sure of 
getting out of the bunker in one stroke. 

Everybody who has studied books of instruction 
knows that the usual advice to a golfer in a bunker 
is to aim behind the ball, and I am certain that this 
procedure is often adopted when it is not necessary, 
as, for instance when the ball is lying cleanly a yard 
or two from a fairly shallow face, and can be 
raised by a firm hit which produces back-spin — the 
stroke which I have described in another chapter. 
But where the expedient of aiming behind the ball 
commends itself to the golfer, let him remember to 



HOW TO USE THE NIBLICK 79 

bury the head of the niblick in the sand with all the 
power that he can command. 

It is a very common error to aim behind the ball 
and then try to carry the club through. This will 
produce no effect at all, except to move the ball 
nearer to the face; the whole effort has to finish 
with the delving of the niblick-head into the sand. 
How far you aim behind depends upon the distance 
that you want to make the ball go. If you have 
only a few yards to travel, you can attack the sand 
three or four inches behind the ball. It is necessary 
to keep your vision fixed on that spot, and not to 
bother about the ball, which will come up all right 
if you hit with power. 

A full swing is wanted, but not a round swing, 
like that adopted for driving. The movement of 
the club should be straight up and straight down, or 
as near to that as you can get. 

Sometimes you bring up whole clouds of sand. 
James Braid plays this and other bunker shots per- 
fectly. I remember it being said that, when he re- 
covered from the bunker at the seventeenth hole at 
St, Andrews in the open championship which he 
won there in 1905, he made the green tremble by 
the strength with which he dug into the soil in order 
to secure a shot of ten yards. At the finish there 
was almost as much sand outside the hazard as there 
was in it. 

When he and I played a foursome against Dun- 
can and Mayo at about the same period, I dehber- 



80 THE GIST OF GOLF 

ately put my partner into the bunker on the left just 
below the pin at the short sixth hole at Walton 
Heath in each round. The green was so keen that 
we were almost certain to be in one or other of the 
bunkers, and I knew that Braid would put the ball 
near the hole from this particular hazard. He 
nearly emptied the bunker of sand, and we won the 
hole both in the morning and the afternoon. 

Perhaps my own best bunker shot was accom- 
plished in this way in a match with Braid. The 
occasion was the England v. Scotland contest at 
Sandwich in 1904. We were all square driving 
from the last tee, and I put my tee-shot into the 
bunker guarding the green. The hole was shorter 
then than it is now. My ball was dead up against the 
face of the hazard, twenty yards short of the hole. 
I took what somebody described as "cartloads of 
sand,*' and up came the ball to drop within a few 
feet of the hole. That shot enabled me to halve 
the match. If you hit hard enough, and take plenty 
of sand, you can get the ball out of the most des- 
perate-looking position in a bunker. 

Really a more difficult shot is that from long 
grass. It is no use trying to nip in immediately 
behind the ball in the hope of executing something 
in the nature of a stab shot, as many players do. 
The roots of the grass will always check the pace 
of the club-head so effectually as to produce no 
result worth having. 

Neither is an ordinary swing at the ball calculated 



HOW TO USE THE NIBLICK 81 

to achieve the purpose; the club pushes the grass 
down on the ball and smothers it so completely that 
it cannot escape. The only way is to aim several 
inches behind (sometimes as many as four inches), 
cut right through the roots of the vegetation and 
take the ball in the course of the stroke. Naturally 
this calls for a shot in which the club-head travels in 
one plane for a longer distance than in any other 
stroke ; it is moving parallel to the ground, and only 
just clear of it, for five or six inches. But unless 
you cut through the roots of the grass behind the 
ball, you will never get that object clear of the en- 
tanglement. It is necessary to keep a very firm 
grip of the club to prevent it turning in the hands. 

There are more varieties of long grass in America 
than in England, and some of them are so stiff that 
a good deal of strength is required to carve a way 
through to the ball. Remember not to slow down 
until the follow-through is well under way; you 
want to swing as though you were slashing at the 
grass with a razor and determined to leave the 
reaper nothing to do in that particular spot. 

Above all, never lose your temper when you are 
in difficulties. Equanimity is half the battle. Some 
men there are who find it very difficult to remain 
calm and hopeful in a trying situation. The only 
thing to do when you see your ball disappear into an 
unpleasant place is to remember that many a hole 
is won when it looks lost beyond recall. 

I used to know a clergyman who suffered un- 



82 THE GIST OF GOLF 

speakable agony in his effort to control his feelings 
when he hit a ball into a bunker. In the graphic 
words of his caddie : "Big blue pimples would come 
out on his face and you'd think he was going to 
have a fit." In these crises, he always snatched 
from an inside pocket a prayer book and scurried 
forward reading it until gradually his rage subsided, 
and he found himself capable of tackling the situa- 
tion with a tranquil mind. It must be for every- 
body to decide how he can best placate himself in 
such emergencies. 

In long grass, one's fancy sometimes turns to- 
wards the mashie, but on the whole the niblick is the 
best club to use when heavy recovery work has to 
be done. It should be a club with an unbendable 
shaft and a stout head; it should be the heaviest 
instrument in the bag and some 16 or 17 ounces in 
weight. Even in the hands of th^ artist, it is in- 
tended for use as something of a bludgeon. 

It is a fact — indisputable and inexplicable — ^that 
to thousands of golfers the water hazard is the 
most awe-inspiring on the course. 

Many a player who can look a bunker of fearsome 
proportions straight in the face, take with a brave 
heart the measure of its sandy expanses, shored up 
by rugged sleepers, and carry the whole lot as 
though it were a commonplace accomplishment, has 
to confess that the sight of a pond or a lake which 
bars the way to the hole scatters the whole of his 
confidence. 



HOW TO USE THE NIBLICK 83 

He feels that he is certain to hit his ball into it. 
Why he has this fear he does not know. All that 
he is certain about is that it is vindicated with un- 
comfortable frequency. 

If we could take a pond on a course and any 
bunker of equal size, and count the number of shots 
hit into each in a year, we should almost assuredly 
find the pond an easy winner. By no means is this 
mysterious attractive power of water peculiar to 
golf. It is in the nature of things for people to be 
drawn towards water (except, possibly, as a bev- 
erage) ; that is why they walk to the edge of a lake 
to inspect it when they would have just as good a 
view from a distance of thirty yards and why they 
stand on a bridge or an embankment gazing into a 
river and yet looking at nothing in particular — 
except water. 

But this fascination is the stronger in golf be- 
cause, even while the vision is focussed on the ball 
just before the stroke, the pond still lives in the 
mind's eye. It is something to be avoided, but 
the picture of it is there all the while, exercising 
a strange allurement. 

If proof were needed of the existence of this 
influence, it could be found in the novel record 
which has been established at Garden City, New 
lYork — the club that is uppermost in the minds of 
Britishers when they think of American golf, by 
reason of the fact that Mr. W. J. Travis, playing 
as its representative, took the British amateur cham- 



84 THE GIST OF GOLF 

pionship cup to repose under its roof in 1904. Gar- 
den City has — or had — a pond at its last hole, and 
I understand that club statisticians have calculated 
the number of balls that enter its clutches in a 
year. They put the loss down at 5,000 balls in 
twelve months. 

A suggestion has been made, I gather, that a 
net should be laid at the bottom of the pond and 
drawn up periodically so as to recover the treasure. 
Trawling might be a good solution to the prob- 
lem, but it is merely a matter of further arithmetical 
work to decide how long it will take to fill the pond 
completely with balls, and thus prevent any others 
from being sunk. The player would then simply 
walk on to the expanse of rubber-cored pebbles, 
and play his ball where it lay — if he could distin- 
guish it. 

On British courses a good many ponds have been 
either drained and converted into bunkers or filled 
up during recent years. A desire to avert unneces- 
sary loss of balls may have been largely responsible 
for this tendency, but it is certain that in many 
places the reason is to be found in the weird en- 
chantment which water exercises on the shots of a 
considerable proportion of the members. 

Be it said that this influence is not confined to 
the less practised golfers. I remember that when 
I was playing once at Boston, U.S.A., the first thing 
that caught my eye as I stepped on to the teeing 
ground was a pond far away to the left. 



HOW TO USE THE NIBLICK 85 

It was such a long way off that nobody ought 
to have got into it. And yet I felt somehow that 
I should be in it. The green could be reached with 
a cleek, and I kept on telling myself that I must 
aim well to the right so as not to be near the pond. 
But, sure enough, my ball went plump into the 
middle of it. The incident was rather disturbing 
because the Boston papers had written a lot about 
my arrival, including interviews which I had never 
had the honour of supplying. They had come out 
with big headlines to their columns with the words : 
"Vardon arrives : Confident of winning and beating 
record." The first thought that occurred to me as 
my ball splashed into the pond was the question 
whether the spectators believed that I had expressed 
this confidence, and, if so, what their opinion of me 
was after my first shot. 

In the ordinary way, however, it is not so much 
the distant area of water that attracts the ball as 
the small pond which is almost under the player's 
nose — the insignificant pool which he wants to carry 
with the mashie. 

Around London, probably the most imposing 
water hazard is the lake at the sixteenth hole at 
Stoke Poges. The length of the carry depends 
upon the teeing ground which is in use, but it can 
be as much as 150 yards, and that afifords plenty 
of scope for error on the part of a moderate golfer 
who frankly confesses that he hates to be faced 
by water. 



86 THE GIST OF GOLF 

There used to be a jolly old waterman who 
rowed about that lake recovering balls at a penny 
a time. Statistics as to his takings in a busy sea- 
son would have been interesting. He was a lynx- 
eyed prowler of the deep, with some of the instincts 
of a diver. He would spot the exact place at which 
the ball entered the water, and direct his net unerr- 
ingly to its locale. 

The Ranelagh lake, another feature of golf in the 
English metropolis, also claimed many victims. 
Even is it said to have in its confines at least one 
bag of clubs, the property of Mr. Fred Kerr, the 
actor. One day, when he had driven all his rubber- 
cores, to the number of six, into the lake, he walked 
dramatically to the water's edge, threw in his clubs, 
and with the remark, "Old pond, have these as 
well !'' went off home. 

The one thing to be said in favour of the water 
hazard is that it is absolutely impartial. There are 
no half-measures about its form of punishment ; it is 
a whole-hogger. If both sides get into it, they 
suffer equally. In ordinary bunkers there is a 
good deal of luck in the matter of the lie, accentu- 
ated by the fact that some players are not so zeal- 
ous as they should be in smoothing the marks which 
they make in the sand. 

Not long ago I met a golfer who was vowing 
vengeance on some unknown person who had left a 
gaping hole in a bunker. My friend had accom- 
plished a particularly low score in the morning, and 



HOW TO USE THE NIBLICK 87 

backed himself at long odds to beat it in the after- 
noon. He was well on the way to achieving that 
end, he said, when he came to a short hole near 
home. His tee-shot was bunkered, and when he 
reached his ball he found it half-buried in a hole as 
deep as a breakfast cup. 

The result was that he took 9 strokes in the sand, 
and 12 to get it down. And, of course, he lost his 
bet. Probably he lost his temper as well, as I 
think he must have done, judging by the condi- 
tion in which I met him. All this would have been 
avoided if the person who visited the hazard before 
him had performed his duty to other bunker-users. 

No doubt every golfer has suffered the annoy- 
ance of getting into somebody else's divot or bunker 
mark. It might not be a bad idea to make it the 
honourable obligation of a partner or opponent to 
draw attention to his companion's delinquences in 
forgetting to repair the scarred earth. 

I daresay that it often happens that the golfer 
blames the heel-mark in the bunker when none actu- 
ally exists. Most of us have witnessed unfortunate 
heroes hammering away in places of retribution for 
so long a period as to suggest the possibility of their 
having acquired a lease of the unhappy spot, just as 
some morbidly disposed individuals like to live in 
houses in which murders have been committed. 
When this type of golfer does at length emerge 
from the hazard, he generally says that his ball was 
buried in a hole made by somebody else. On a Lon- 



88 THE GIST OF GOLF 

don course I once saw a player make a drive from 
the first tee which landed in a pot bunker on the 
left. He entered this simple-looking resort of the 
erring, and to the people who were awaiting his 
pleasure, it seemed to be an age before he came 
out again. 

He worked his way round and round the walls 
of his prison, ever hitting the ball and never quite 
extricating it. He was like a bird of the forest 
suddenly trapped and fluttering its wings with fev- 
erish excitement at the bars of its gaol in a frenzied 
effort to regain its freedom. At the finish, he ex- 
plained that he was in a deep heel-mark. Judging 
by the time he spent in getting out, he must have 
been in something like a coal-mine. 

In the ordinary way there is little excuse for 
anybody taking more than one shot in a hazard. 
I suppose that, in the majority of instances, it is 
either lack of forethought or excess of ambition 
that leads to disaster in bunkers. Except where the 
ball lies in an obviously hopeless position, the tempt- 
ation to attempt a tour de force is nowhere stronger 
than in a hazard. Yet the lesson that is learnt by 
studying the doings of successful players is that, 
unless the lie is particularly favourable, it is sound 
policy to resign oneself on the spot to the loss of 
a stroke as punishment for a mistake, and to trust 
to recovering it later. 

A long shot from a hazard is a thrilling piece of 
self-satisfaction and a fine spectacle. The wise 



HOW TO USE THE NIBLICK 89 

man is he who tries it only when it can be done, 
and that is not often. Just once in a while you 
see the chance of bringing it off. Almost my last 
personal experience of it was on a Brighton course. 
The ball was lying on the sloping face of a bunker, 
and it had to come up quickly in order to escape 
the top. Fortunately the face of the hazard was 
by no means precipitous, and with a brassie I 
managed to get the ball away and deposit it on the 
green, 200 yards ahead. 

At Prestwick, in the British open championship 
of 1914, Taylor took his brassie in a bunker at 
the ninth hole and hit almost as long a shot as he 
would have accomplished from the fairway. That 
sort of thing is possible on occasion, and certain it 
is that it is considerably easier to the crack golfer 
who is tolerably sure of controlling the elevation of 
the ball than to the mediocre player, whose every shot 
is a dash into the great unknown. Yet the latter 
is far more disposed than the top-sawyer to essay 
a long shot from a bunker. 

In point of fact, it is comparatively seldom that 
one sees a first-class performer obtain considerable 
distance from a hazard. Very often his restraint 
must seem disappointing. He merely howks the 
ball out, 20 or 30 or 40 yards up the course. Yet 
it is not always that a shot of hair-raising brilliancy 
is outside the range of possibiHty. It is simply 
that in normal circumstances the effort is not 
worth the risk that it involves. 



90 THE GIST OF GOLF 

When there is no alternative to a death-or-glory 
endeavour, people sometimes do amazing things. 
One of the best bunker shots I have ever seen was 
that by Edward Ray when, in the final of the News 
of the World tournament at Walton Heath in 1911, 
his chance seemed gone beyond recall. Standing 
2 down with 3 to go, Ray was about as badly bunk- 
ered at the sixteenth hole as any but the most cruel- 
hearted person could conceive. His ball was lying 
half-buried close to the face of a hazard 3 feet high, 
with the green 100 yards ahead. By making the 
ball rise quickly, aiming to the left so as to give it 
a chance to get up before reaching the face of the 
bunker, and imparting a tremendous amount of 
slice to the shot, he actually got on to the green 
and halved in 4. Most of the people had walked 
away, convinced that he could not possibly prolong 
the match. 

That, however, was a desperate situation which 
called for a desperate endeavour. In the ordinary 
way I would say to the club golfer, "Look for the 
easiest way out, and concentrate on escaping from 
the hazard in one shot." 

There are times when there is nothing for it but 
to trust to one's instinct and adaptability to secure 
the best possible position for playing an unusual 
shot. I remember on one occasion at Muirfield 
having to go down on to both knees in order to 
get at a ball which was lying close up to the deep 



HOW TO USE THE NIBLICK 91 

face of a bunker running parallel with the course. 
In this case, however, perhaps it would have been 
better if I had stood in the bunker and recovered 
by playing back. Sometimes, in a hazard, it is 
worth while remembering that one is entitled to re- 
trace one's steps; nobody likes it, but occasionally 
it is the easiest and safest way out of trouble, espe- 
cially when there is a good chance of reaching the 
green with the next shot. 

A ditch is another painful place of retribution. 
You may have to stand with one foot in it and one 
out, or in some other uncomfortable way. There is 
only one golden rule to observe when the ball is 
badly in a ditch; it is to bring the niblick down 
with a crash about an inch behind the object — just 
as one does in the sand when particularly horribly 
bunkered — so that the upheaval of soil will make 
the ball jump up and escape. Unless you have 
plenty of room in which to swing and the chance 
of making the ball fly straight — a privilege that is 
not often forthcoming in a ditch — it is not much 
use trying to take the ball cleanly. 

We have reached the end of lessons. I hope that, 
here and there, the hints that I have given may be 
helpful to the golfer who, loving the game as a 
hobby and a recreation, wants to play it well. More 
than any other pastime that I know — and I have 
tried most forms of sport — does it fan the flames 
of emulation. I doubt whether anywhere there is 



92 THE GIST OF GOLF 

a golfer of any age who does not hope to do better 
to-morrow than he did to-day, though this after- 
noon he played the round of his life. His ambi- 
tion is ever upward. 

Sometimes it is said that success on the links is 
impossible to the person who has neglected the 
game in his or her early youth. I am not so sure 
of that. The value of a training in schooldays is 
unquestionable ; but it is possible to make up for a 
great deal of lost time if you set about the task 
in the right way — the way that I have endeavoured 
to indicate. 

I have just expressed that sentiment aloud, and 
somebody has said, "What about yourself? You 
must have been playing every day when you were 
a boy." I most certainly wasn't playing anything 
like every day, or even once a week, when I was 
a boy. It is a very good thing for a youngster to 
learn the swing at the time when the imitative 
faculty of the young mind is at its best; but I am 
sure that an exaggerated importance is attributed 
to the assiduous pursuit of the game in childhood. 

I realise that, in saying this, I am guilty of 
something akin to heresy. It is customary in dis- 
cussing the beginnings of famous golfers to pro- 
duce evidence that, as soon as they could toddle 
they went out and practised with a diligence worthy 
of veterans. We have been told repeatedly how 
they stuck to the game through their 'teens, until 
at length they could be said to have grown up 



HOW TO USE THE NIBLICK 93 

with it — the only way, according to tradition, to 
master golf. 

So many people have told us that the one royal 
road to success is to take up the game in child- 
hood and play it until it becomes ingrained in the 
constitution — to be "teethed on a golf-club handle," 
as it has been put — that I see no reason to withhold 
evidence to the contrary vs^ith a piece of autobi- 
ography. 

Up to the time I was twenty years of age, I 
played so little golf that even now I can remember 
almost every round as a red-letter event of my 
youthful days. We were a big family of six boys 
and two girls, and at the age of twelve I went out 
to work to do my bit in the maintenance of the 
home. At that time I had not the slightest thought 
of taking seriously to golf. To be sure, the forma- 
tion of the Royal Jersey Golf Club five years prev- 
iously, at our little village of Grouville, had 
prompted most of the boys in the village to dabble 
in the game. We had a little course of our own, 
and some homemade clubs of a primitive kind, in 
which a stick from a blackthorn served as the shaft 
and a piece of oak as the head, the two being fas- 
tened together by boring a hole in the "head" with 
a red-hot poker, inserting the black-thorn stick 
and tightening the joint with the aid of wedges. Of 
iron clubs we had none. 

Truth to tell, however, I was not particularly 
keen on the game, and played very seldom. I used 



94 THE GIST OF GOLF 

to busy myself at the beach, collecting seaweed 
which sold for a sum that brought a nice few pounds 
a year into the family exchequer. I think that, 
whatever may have been my faults, I can claim to 
have been a boy who wasted little time. One of my 
little passions was to collect all the nails I could 
find by extracting them from discarded pieces of 
wood, straightening them with a hammer when they 
were bent, and assembling them in a box which I 
had made with eight compartments for the differ- 
ent sizes of nails. I obtained a truly imposing array, 
and was glad to learn from my mother, a few years 
ago, that she was still keeping the box of nails that 
came of my boyish idea of industrial economy. 

When I was thirteen, I entered a doctor's service 
to act as page-boy and wait at table. For four 
years I had virtually no golf at all. To be sure, 
I would go out occasionally with other boys on 
moonlight nights for a game, but I do not know 
that my spasmodic appearances on the links in these 
circumstances can be held to have constituted 
very serious practice. In later days people often 
said to me, "I used to know you when you were 
playing golf as a boy at Jersey." In point 
of fact, it was my brother Tom they knew, for he 
obtained a good deal of golf, whereas I was not far 
from being a stranger to the game. Apart from 
my duties as page-boy, I helped to make butter and 
performed various other duties, so that there was 
not much time for golf. 



HOW TO USE THE NIBLICK 95 

When I was seventeen, I went as gardener to 
Major Spofforth— a brother of Mr. F. R. Spofforth, 
the famous Australian cricketer, who was known in 
two hemispheres as "the demon bowler." Major 
Spofforth was keen on golf, and every now and 
again he took me out to play. He also gave me 
some of his old clubs, which seemed very wonderful 
after the clumsy, homemade things that I had been 
using. All the same, I was not at this period a dili- 
gent seeker of success on the links. I liked cricket 
and football, and went in a good deal for running, 
winning ten prizes as a sprinter. I remember, dur- 
ing a holiday, taking part in six races in two days. 

One of my duties was to scare the crows from an 
area of ground under cultivation, and to render the 
job as interesting as possible, I made a practice 
of playing an improvised kind of golf round the 
field. I had my own marks that ranked as holes, 
and was always trying to beat my own "record'* — 
it was my own because nobody else ever attacked it. 
No doubt this experience was useful, although I 
never regarded it as anything but a means of re- 
lieving the dullness of a slow job. 

Apart from an occasional round with Major 
Spofforth — which invariably made me feel very 
nervous — my golf was limited to Christmas, Easter, 
Whitsun, and August Bank Holiday. On these 
occasions I played mostly with Willie Gaudin, who 
subsequently went to America. Major Spofforth 
once said to me, "Henry, if I were you I would 



96 THE GIST OF GOLF 

not give up my golf; it may be useful to you some 
day." I remembered the words, but at that time 
I had not the remotest idea of developing into a 
champion. 

My first attempt to play golf in a really earnest 
frame of mind was when, at the age of twenty, I 
entered a competition for a vase given by the local 
working men's club. We had to play one round a 
month for six months, and I won pretty easily. 
Alas ! the prize — my most cherished trophy because 
it was my first, although it had no great monetary 
value — was destroyed when a German airman 
dropped a bomb at the back door of my home at 
Totteridge and brought the building tumbling about 
the ears of myself and my family. 

Just before my first competition concluded, the 
news reached me that my brother Tom, who had 
gone to England to launch out as a professional 
golfer, had won second prize in an open profes- 
sional tournament at Musselburgh. The award 
was £20. It seemed an enormous amount to me, 
and I pondered long and intently over it. I knew 
that, little as I had played, I was as good as Tom. 
If he could win that vast fortune, why shouldn't I? 

My father — ^himself a golfer — was not enamoured 
of my ambition to become a professional. He had 
never seen me play ; there had been very few oppor- 
tunities for him to do so. It was not until I had 
won three championships that he saw my golf for 
the first time. 



HOW TO USE THE NIBLICK 97 

He had watched Tom on a good many occasions 
and was satisfied that he would make a golfer, but 
he could not reconcile himself to the belief that a 
person who took such a dilettantish interest in the 
game as myself would ever excel at it. Happy and 
sacred his memory! Even in later years he de- 
clined to abandon his early convictions and was 
wont to say, ''Harry wins the prizes, but Tom plays 
the golf." 

I have said enough to show that a boy need not 
grow up from babyhood "teethed on a golf -club 
handle" and play the game diligently in his young 
days in order to excel at it. 

If I had a son, I would not attempt to force the 
golfing pace upon him. Until he attained at least 
the age of fourteen, I would tell him simply to watch 
good players and to copy them. Children cannot 
be taught golf, but they are born mimics, and if you 
put them into good company they will grow up in 
the right way. You must let them do as they will 
for a time — at any rate on the links — and then 
when they rise to such discretion as the age of four- 
teen or fifteen engenders in them, you can give them 
hints that will make them advance rapidly. 

At home, I studied the styles of the golfers I saw 
because it seemed natural to do so, but I cannot 
say that I moulded my methods on those of any- 
body in particular. I never had a lesson, and can- 
not recall anybody who impressed me as being a 
model who should be copied. 



98 THE GIST OF GOLF 

There is some mystery about the consistency with 
which the Jersey golfers have adapted themselves 
to the upright swing — that compact manner of 
wielding the club which came as a shock to the 
people who for years had worshipped the longer 
and flatter method known as the St. Andrews swing. 
My own brother and Edward Ray, the Gaudins, the 
Becks, and the Renoufs, all drifted involuntarily 
into the habit of taking the club to the top of the 
swing by the shortest route, whereas the popular 
way before was to sweep the club back flat at the 
start and make a very full flourish of the swing. 
Why we hit upon the other way we do not know. 

Personally, I never thought about the matter until 
I obtained my first professional post at Ripon, York- 
shire. And it was when I was twenty-one and in 
my second appointment at Bury, Lancashire, that 
I began to study and learn golf in real earnest. 



THE NIBLICK 

ILLUSTRATIVE CHART 




Stance and Address. — When playing a niblick 
shot from a bunker the stance and address are much 
the same as for the mashie, with the important excep- 
tion that the weifrht of the body must be thrown rather 
more on the left leer 



r 




Beginning of Up-Swing. — The weight of the 
body has inchned even more on to the left leg. As this 
is one of the few forcing shots in golf, the club must 
be held very firmly. 




'Top of Swing. — A decidedly more upright swing 
than for any other club, on account of the fact that 
the niblick must be brought down straighter so as to 
deliver the blow behind the ball instead of taking 
the latter cleanly off the ground. 




Beginning of Down-Swing. — The boay, it will 
be seen, has inclined towards the hole, throwing most 
of the weight on to the left leg. In this position you 
are prevented from " scooping " at the ball, a fatal 
error when using this club. 



iii 



THE NIBLICK 




Finish of Swing. — Nearly all the weight on the 
left leg and immediately behind the ball. The 
arms have been extended to almost their full length 
and the club head has delved into the soil behind the 
ball, forcing the latter into the air and clear of the 
bunker. 



Chapter V: HOW TO USE THE MASHIE 

WITH HINTS ON PRACTISING AND 
SOME ADVENTURES 



Chapter V 
HOW TO USE THE MASHIE 

WITH HINTS ON PRACTISING AND SOME 
ADVENTURES 

THE mashie shot in golf is a specialised shot. 
In its main features it is a law unto itself. 

I have heard people say that the swing' for every 
club in the bag is the same. They declare that the 
differences which present themselves to the eye in a 
first-class player's way of managing his set of im- 
plements — his less upright and more upright swings, 
according to the club that is in use, and the effects 
of those swings on the flight of the ball — are merely 
the results of variations in the lengths and lofts of 
the clubs. 

I do not desire to criticise that judgment at all 
severely. Once you know the correct swing for 
driving, you are on a very fair way to mastering 
all the shots in the game, and I agree that, when 
using the cleek, mid-iron, and kindred clubs for 
plain straightforward shots, you need not be con- 
scious of attempting anything very different from 
that which you essayed with the driver. Such 
changes as are desirable are matters of stance rather 
101 



102 THE GIST OF GOLF 

than swing, as I have explained in the chapters con- 
cerning those clubs. 

When you take in hand the mashie, I do not sug- 
gest for a moment that you should blot out your pre- 
vailing idea of the swing and try to substitute an- 
other. But what I do say is that it is a specialised 
shot that you make with the mashie; that if the 
swing is the same, only on a smaller scale, as with 
the clubs of longer range, you are never so safe as 
when you produce that swing in a way specially 
adapted to the club. 

I am assuming that you do not take full bangs 
with the mashie, like a slogger at cricket making 
a death-or-glory swipe at the ball in the hope of 
carrying not only the fieldsmen and the spectators 
but the pavilion as well. Some golfers do that, 
but it is not the mashie's work. It is a club built 
for calculated approaching. It is meant above all 
things to control the flight of the ball so that when 
you are within ready hail of the putting green — cer- 
tainly little, if any, more than 100 yards from it — 
you can play the ball with that feeling that the 
mashie ought to give of being able to bring the 
ball to rest within holing distance. You cannot 
have much of that feeling when you are hitting with 
what somebody has described as divine frenzy. You 
can only trust to luck in those circumstances. 

The way to cultivate a sense of assurance with 
the mashie is to have the club under restraint all 
the while; to know that you can get the distance 



HOW TO USE THE MASHIE 103 

without forcing. And the way to keep the mashie 
under complete control is to work the hip-pivot of 
the body — for we must turn the body at the hips 
for every shot except a putt — from the knees instead 
of from the feet. Let the feet be so steadily estab- 
lished on the ground that you lift the left heel hardly 
at all as you take the club back, and the right heel 
hardly at all as you finish. Let the feet — which in 
longer shots have played an important part in the 
winding-up and unwinding of the body — be merely 
agents for supporting the working of the knees. 

First of all, we must stand properly. The stance 
should be decidedly open; that is to say, the body 
should be facing more towards the hole than for 
iron shots. Have the ball opposite the left heel 
and about twenty inches distant from it, with the 
toes of the foot pointing well outwards. Let the 
right foot be square to the line that you propose 
to take, and put it so far forward that the toes, 
pointing straight ahead, are a good eight inches 
ahead of the toes of the left foot pointing outwards. 
Thus we are standing well over the ball, with the 
body facing distinctly towards the hole. 

The secret of the successful mashie swing is to 
inaugurate the turn of the body from the knees so 
that the feet remain almost motionless from be- 
ginning to end. The posture should be one of re- 
laxation with an element of slackness at the knees. 
As in all other shots, the club starts first. With 
the mashie the body does not screw round so far 



104 THE GIST OF GOLF 

as when clubs of longer range are in use, but it 
must turn a little at the hips to prevent swaying. 
As it thus turns the right leg stiffens until it is 
straight. When it is in that condition the up-swing 
is complete. Meanwhile, the left knee will have 
bent slightly. It must have done so if you have 
remembered to keep the foot practically stationary 
— or, at any rate, not to have lifted the heel very 
much from the ground. 

The down-swing is a matter of unscrewing the 
body by returning the right knee to its original bent 
position. In short, then, you obtain the turn of the 
hips by stiffening the right knee and bending the 
left, and then stiffening the left and bending the 
right. The knees control the whole action of the 
body as it follows the arms and the club. As the 
club goes through you can raise the outer side of the 
right foot from the ground so as to be resting on 
the inner side, but do not lift the heel if you can 
help it. What many players do is to make free with 
both feet, and so lose the stability of stance which 
helps in accurate hitting. Keep your head down 
and still until the ball has been struck, and do not 
attempt to work the wrists in an attempt to scoop 
the ball into the air. The club will lift it all right 
(it is shaped for that purpose) if you simply aim 
half an inch behind the ball and play straight through 
it. If you want a lot of loft, take the niblick. It is 
a pretty sound rule that endeavouring to shovel 
the ball into the air by a turn of the wrists is sure 



HOW TO USE THE MASHIE 105 

to end in disaster. The body should not move either 
back during the up-swing or forward at the finish. 
It is quite enough for it to turn at the hips through 
the action of the knees. The club will look after 
the ball. 

Very many golfers take almost a full swing with 
the mashie and then try to come down slowly so 
as to hit at the requisite strength. That is entirely 
wrong. If you were knocking a stone with a stick, 
you would strike it smartly; you would not delib- 
erate about the pace of the stick. So, with the 
mashie, you must always come down smartly. There 
must be no faltering. In a sense, you hit as firmly 
as when you are driving. The only difference is 
that if you do not take the club up far, you have 
not time to get the same pace on the club as when 
executing a full swing, and so the impact is less 
powerful. The tendency to try and scoop the ball 
into the air is strongest when you are near the hole. 
Some players then lay the blade of the club right 
back or else poke it under the ball as they hit ; they 
feel that they must make some special effort to be 
sure of lifting the object. This fancy work is the 
cause of half the foozling. 

To overcome the habit I recommend my pupils 
to practise pitching over a bush, starting at 70 yards 
and gradually reducing the distance to 20 yards. 
At 70 yards you are compelled to hit firmly, without 
any attempt at scooping, in order to obtain the neces- 
sary carry. If you play three shots at that range, 



106 THE GIST OF GOLF 

then three at 60 yards, then three at 50 yards, and 
so on down to 20 yards, and always play them in the 
same way except that you shorten the up-swing as 
you draw nearer to the bush, you ought to get out 
of the fatal way of trying to shovel the ball into the 
air by a turn of the wrists. The best distance at 
which to practise with the mashie is from 40 to 60 
yards. Personally, for an ordinary pitch-and-run 
shot, I generally play for a spot about 3 yards short 
of the hole. If the ball strikes a piece of ground 
of average firmness, it will run to somewhere near 
the hole. Of course, if it pitches on soft turf it 
will stop short, and if it lands on a very hard piece 
it will run past. That cannot be helped. 

It is good occasionally to practise pitching with 
the niblick, which is a useful club when you want 
the ball to rise quickly and stop almost where it 
pitches. Its disadvantage compared with the 
mashie is that the edge of its sole is very sharp, 
and is therefore apt to stick into the ground and 
spoil the stroke unless you play it perfectly. Still, 
it is a very valuable alternative for the person who is 
not proficient at the cut stroke with the mashie, 
which is one of the most difficult shots in the game. 

I played the best stroke of my life with a niblick. 
It was in a tournament at Northwood, near Lon- 
don, when my ball lay within 4 feet of the club- 
house — a building 30 feet high which barred the 
way to the green about 30 yards ahead in a straight 
line. To tell the truth, I don't know quite how it 



HOW TO USE THE MASHIE 107. 

was done — I only know that I applied more back- 
spin than ever I got on any other shot and hit with 
all my might. Spectators will vouch for the fact 
that the ball rose almost straight till it reached the 
top of the club-house and then sailed forward and 
stopped a yard from the pin. After which I missed 
the putt ! That brought me to my senses. 

Approaching with the mashie or the niblick — ' 
and in all save a few circumstances I recommend the 
mashie, because it is really the easier club to use, 
even at short range — is, I suppose, the most popular 
of all forms of golf practice. There is a fascina- 
tion in trying to place the ball near an objective, 
whether it be a mark on the fairway or a flag-pin 
in a putting green. Personally, I never tire of it. 
Often I engage in it when waiting five minutes for 
a pupil, and much as it is pursued, I do not think 
that the average golfer has enough of it. 

Many an odd quarter of an hour would be well- 
spent in practising mashie shots with half a dozen 
balls — first from about 90 yards and then from 50 
yards. If you choose your training pitch wisely, you 
are in no danger of losing your treasured rubber- 
cores. You can see exactly where they alight; re- 
trieve them in two or three minutes ; and start again. 
When I was younger I practised matching one ball 
against another in mashie pitches. It taught my 
hand and eye a lot. 

Success in approaching is largely a matter of 
practice — not of physical attributes nor an inborn 



108 THE GIST OF GOLF 

capacity for playing games. Indeed, I would go 
further and say that where the average golfer has 
the best opportunity of making progress is in the 
mashie shot — the shot of 100 yards or less. 

Willie Park once said that "the man who can putt 
is a match for anybody,'' to which the obvious re- 
tort was that "the man who can approach has no 
need to be able to putt." The pitch-and-run mashie 
shot is really a simple operation, and that four 
golfers out of five play it badly is due to the fact 
that they do too much fanciful pivoting and wrist- 
work when actually only the plainest of plain move- 
ments is required. They think it is difficult, and 
therefore make it difficult. 

If you can approach well, you will win far more 
matches than ever you will lose. I have some par- 
ticularly joyous memories of the usefulness of 
deadly approaching, and none more happy than that 
of a match which I played with an English Inter- 
nationalist, Tom Williamson, on a nine holes course 
at Radcliffe-on-Trent, some years ago. Each of 
us was immensely keen on winning, because, on 
the night preceding the contest, we were shown a 
handsome cup which a member of the club had 
presented as a reward for the victor. It was a 
course that exactly suited the man who could drive 
and pitch. The holes were neither short nor long; 
at most of them, after a good tee-shot, you wanted 
a mashie. I was up betimes next morning practis- 
ing with that club, and I think I used it as well as 



HOW TO USE THE MASHIE 109 

need be. My scores for three rounds of the nine 
holes were 31, 32, and 31. I won by 11 up and 
9 to play. There were three 2's in the afternoon, 
in connection with which the mashie took a perhaps 
inordinate part, since it sent the ball into the hole. 
I holed very few putts of more than three or four 
yards. 

Williamson's father, who used to be a station- 
master near by (he was very keen on golf, and it 
was funny to see him playing in the regalia of 
gold-braided cap and uniform and dodging into the 
gorse when a train went by in case he should be 
seen by an official in it), was very cut up about the 
result. When a late arrival asked him the result, he 
replied : 'Tom didn't turn up ; at least, I don't think 
anybody saw him." 

That, at any rate, shows you what mashie-ap- 
proaching can do, because, on that occasion, neither 
my driving nor my putting was out of the ordinary. 
Where most golfers make mistakes with the mashie 
is that they pivot too much on their feet, try to 
scoop the ball into the air instead of letting the loft 
of the club do the work for which it was built, and 
throw their weight forward at the impact, at the 
same time raising their heads to see the result of 
the shot. Many, too, take almost a full swing and 
endeavour to regulate the pace of the club coming 
down — a thing nobody could do with consistent 
success. In short, they make a big and intricate job 
of what is truly a simple matter. Possibly it is the 



110 THE GIST OF GOLF 

very simplicity of which they are suspicious; they 
think there must be more in it than meets the eye. 
There isn't. 

I have mentioned the importance of practising, 
and a few hints as to the best way to go about it in 
all its phases may not be out of place at this stage. 

It is a rather curious fact that the value of prac- 
tice is realised far less by the moderate golfer than 
by the crack player. Often you will hear an invet- 
erate foozler say to a champion: 

*'If I could play like you, I wouldn't practise as 
you do ; I'd prefer a match every time." 

What is more, the long handicap man is not easily 
to be persuaded into going out for an hour to a 
quiet comer of the course and studying in solitude 
the questions of cause and effect. Always must he 
have a rival. That is one of the reasons why he 
retains a long handicap. One is so keen in a match 
or a medal round that it is impossible to do all 
the thinking — or, at any rate, the kind of thinking 
— ^that leads to efficiency. 

No matter what the grade of the golfer, practice is 
valuable to him. Never can he be so good a player 
that it is impossible for him to be better. Person- 
ally, I have made it a rule to practise *'on my own" 
at frequent interv^als all my life, and I am certain 
that every successful golfer has done the same. 
Man for man, or woman for woman, there is in- 
finitely more devotion to this subject among ad- 
vanced players than there is where the less accom- 



HOW TO USE THE MASHIE 111 

plished performers are concerned. That is precisely 
why the former are advanced. The trouble is to 
make the less accomplished appreciate the impor- 
tance of a lonely hour on the links. 

For a beginner or a foozler of long standing, 
nothing could be better than an hour's practice every 
day for a month and an entire abstinence from com- 
petitive rounds. I know that it is a lot to ask of a 
person who is longing to prove his progress and 
prowess by conquering somebody, but it is the surest 
means of economising on the links in time and 
money that was ever conceived. It is the only way 
to learn the things that the professional has taught. 

The player who goes straight out and expects to 
put the hints into operation as though he had only 
to hear them in order to master them is not likely 
to profit greatly by his lessons. By the time he 
reaches the fourth hole he forgets nearly everything 
in his anxiety to do something better than his oppo- 
nent. In my early days as a professional, I devoted 
practically a year to practice. That was when I was 
at Ripon, in Yorkshire — my first engagement, en- 
tered upon at the age of twenty. Perhaps I was 
lucky in the fact that there were so few players in 
those days that the opportunity of a match rarely 
presented itself, and so there was nothing to do but 
practise or else exchange my clubs for the game- 
keeper's gun and go rabbit-shooting while he tried 
to do holes in anything from 4 to 40. 

In any case, it was during that year that I learnt 



112 THE GIST OF GOLF 

most of my golf, including the overlapping grip, 
the low-flying back-spin shot with an iron club, and 
the other ideas that were useful in a later period. 
Until I went to Ripon I had made very little study 
of the game. I had played it, as most people do, for 
the fun of the thing, and engaged almost entirely 
in matches and competitions. I can say with per- 
fect truth that I never had a lesson from anybody 
(there was nobody to give me one), but I was a 
very much better golfer when I left Ripon, after a 
year, than when I went there. Such was the result 
of practice, and its effects I remember with grati- 
tude. 

What I would recommend the aspiring golfer to 
do is to go out at the start with a brassie and iron. 
He can leave the mashie till later. We will assume 
that he is going to devote an hour to the business 
in hand. Let him proceed to a remote part of the 
course, where he will not be flurried by passing 
couples, and play tee shots with his brassie for 
fifteen minutes, then iron shots from the turf for 
fifteen minutes, and repeat the process. He will find 
it convenient to have a dozen balls, and a caddie to 
make the tee for the brassie-drives and collect the 
balls when they have been dispatched, but this is a 
matter for personal consideration. 

The main point is that this system of practising 
without having to bother about an opponent's shot 
cultivates the gift of concentration, and enables the 
player to reflect upon the lessons that he has learnt 



HOW TO USE THE MASHIE 113 

and to try and fathom the causes of his failure if 
he is not executing the strokes satisfactorily. 

Thus, if he slices three drives in succession, he 
sets himself to find out the reason — a thing he has 
little time to do in a match. I have explained prev- 
iously that I advise a brassie for the moderate golf- 
er's tee shots when he is practising, because its 
loft and stiffness of shaft render it easier to use 
than a driver, and the confidence thus gained will 
not be lost when he comes to take the strictly cor- 
rect club. 

If the temperament of the student be such that 
he cannot stand a whole hour with two clubs, he 
had better include a mashie and a putter in his prac- 
tising kit, and allot ten minutes to drive, ten minutes 
to iron shots, ten minutes to pitching, ten minutes 
to putting, and then a further ten minutes each to 
drives and iron strokes. These are the shots on 
which to concentrate at the outset. I do not believe 
in more than an hour's practice at a time. At the 
end of that period the player is apt to become a 
trifle weary of the proceedings, and to continue in 
that condition is to do more harm than good. I 
have read that Mr. Walter J. Travis used to give 
an hour to each club and practise for hours on end. 
Some people may be able to do that without suffer- 
ing a sense of boredom, but it would not suit the 
average individual. You must retain a very live 
and keen interest in what you are doing. If you 
can manage it, there is much to be said for the 



114. THE GIST OF GOLF 

scheme of practising for an hour in the morning 
and an hour in the evening. The day's break brings 
you zestfully to the evening session. 

There is no harm occasionally in playing a hole 
on your own. What I used to do frequently was 
to take a couple of balls and play them against one 
another. I still do that occasionally, Especially 
when I am preparing on my home course for an im- 
portant event, and there is really quite a lot of fun 
in it, with the added recommendation of usefulness. 
You concentrate equally on the shots since it is not 
a matter of being beaten by somebody, and at each 
hole you get two drives, two irons or pitches, and 
all the putts that fate may prompt you to take. 

I used to play nine holes in this way, and I found 
that if I got two or three up on myself, the reso- 
lution with which my worse half would set about 
the task of retrieving the situation was such as to 
keep me intensely interested all tlie while. 

It is not necessary, however, to go to the lengths 
of a player whom I knew and who favoured this 
system of practising to such an extent that he used 
to take out two bags of clubs (and carry them him- 
self), go the whole round of the course, and con- 
sider that each bag represented a player. One was 
a new set of clubs and the other an old sdt, 
and he would no more have thought of borrow- 
ing from the new when the old was due to play, 
or vice versa, than of cheating himself about 
the scores for the respective holes. He was a regu- 



HOW TO USE THE MASHIE 115 

lar Jekyll and Hyde of the links, and he got on 
very well, as surely he deserved to do. 

Be it said that one can learn much as to the clubs 
that are suitable in these periods of solitary prac- 
tice. That is a point to which I have always paid 
close attention in the weeks preceding champion- 
ships, and as the result of my experiments, impor- 
tant changes have sometimes taken place in my 
equipment. Thus, just before the big events of 
1914, I found that my driver of long acquaintance 
had lost its charm. Rummaging about in the shop, 
I came across a driver that had been discarded a 
year earlier because it seemed to be too light. I 
fancied it now, and decided to try it against the 
other. The discovery won, and it helped me con- 
siderably to win the British open championship 
and other events of that season. 

Prior to an important occasion, the wise aspirant 
to success goes thoroughly into the question of his 
kit and his capabilities in various departments of 
the game, because he knows that if he leaves every- 
thing till the eleventh hour, when he has reached 
the scene of action he will not be able to make 
changes and try experiments in the same peace of 
mind as on his own course. That is why you see a 
crack golfer practising so often. The moderate 
player may urge that no occasion is specially 
important to him, and that, therefore, he lacks the 
incentive to devote time regularly to practice. But 
we may assume that he wants to improve, and I am 



116 THE GIST OF GOLF 

sure that the best way to do it is the way that cham- 
pions have found profitable. 

I do not believe the man who says he plays only 
for exercise, and that he does not care whether 
his form is good or bad. As a rule, he makes 
such a remark when he is about five down at the 
turn. Golf is a pastime that compels a person to 
want to do better than ever he has done in the past. 
Its nature is to open up wonderful possibilities and 
generate inexhaustible hope. And so the player is 
always believing in his power to improve. 

Home exercises of the dumb-bell and Indian club 
variety, such as a good many golfers make a habit 
of performing with a view to strengthening their 
arms and wrists, are not necessary. Indeed, some- 
times they are positively harmful from a golfing 
point of view, since they may develop strength of 
muscle as opposed to what I would call a healthy 
and normal suppleness. Golf is essentially a natural 
game ; a man needs to be fit in order to play it well, 
and it keeps him fit, but he does not want abnormal 
muscular development. If you have a room suffi- 
ciently large, it is not a bad idea to practise some 
swings on the days when you cannot visit the course. 
This process helps to keep the arms and shoulders in 
working order. For the same reason, the indoor 
schools that are so numerous in America are use- 
ful in the winter, although it is not possible to tell 
when hitting a ball into a net quite what would 



HOW TO USE THE MASHIE 117 

have happened to it if its flight had not been 
arrested. 

For the player who desires to advance, I recom- 
mend at least three hours' practice every week, 
and in the interests of the golfing community, it 
may be suggested that these outings should have 
their base somewhere near the edge of the fairway 
instead of in the middle. They are apt to result in 
the lifting of a good many divots, some of them 
very large if the player is in his novitiate. 

I once saw a beginner at Totterldge miss the ball 
completely and yet lose it. He slogged blindly 
with an iron and lifted a piece of turf about as big 
as a soup plate. The divot dropped neatly on the 
ball just in front. Not seeing the latter object, the 
player thought he had hit it. ^'Where's it gone?" 
he asked excitedly. It was not until somebody told 
him to replace the divot that he found it had not 
gone at all. 

After lessons, we are entitled to turn to lighter 
entertainment. It has been suggested that some- 
where in this work I should describe some of the 
odd experiences that have befallen me on the links. 
We have been serious so long that why should I 
not do it here? 

Far more than any other game does golf lend it- 
self to the provision of strange incidents and excit- 
ing little adventures. It is played in a setting of 
nature; its home is on the open moorland or the 



118 THE GIST OF GOLF 

rolling links by the sea; there is much In it that 
appeals to the primeval instincts of man because 
of the unrestraint of its environment. 

I hesitate to believe the story which Andrew 
Kirkaldy told us when he came back from Mexico 
that it was a common thing to be confronted at a 
lonely part of the course by a bandit who suddenly 
emerged from a wood and with the command, sup- 
ported by a six-shooter : "Hands up ! Your money 
or your life!" proceed to rob the match of all its 
valuables. But we have all read with bated breath 
of the perils which are encountered by enthusiasts 
m some countries, where savage beasts of the forest 
are among the ^'agencies outside the match," and 
death-dealing snakes are said sometimes to be found 
coiled up in the holes. I am glad to say I have 
not yet been subjected to the trial of playing a 
game amid such distractions, but in England I have 
had one engagement with an animal which I shall 
not readily forget, and which gave me a very 
anxious five minutes. 

The episode occurred when I was professional 
to the Bury Club, Lancashire, something like thirty 
years ago. In those days golf eked out a rather 
precarious existence in England. The landlord of 
the ground on which our course was situated had no 
respect at all for the people who came to hit a ball 
about his estate. We were there on sufferance, and 
one of the troubles that we had to endure was that 
he insisted on putting his prize bulls to graze on 



HOW TO USE THE MASHIE 119 

the course. They were a fine collection of animals, 
and one — a white bull — ^had secured for him many- 
prizes, but they made a round of golf a risky pro- 
ceeding, and there were many players who would 
not venture so far as the first tee when these bovine 
hazards were in evidence. 

The white bull was particularly ill-disposed to- 
wards us. Often it sent us scuttling to places of 
safety when, just as we were preparing to accom- 
plish a critical shot, we saw it galloping towards 
us, with eyes ablaze and tail whirling ferociously 
in the air. I had to make several hasty and undig- 
nified flights in consequence of its unruliness; but 
whenever anybody complained to the landlord about 
its behaviour, he invariably said: *'You shouldn't 
tease him. He would be all right if you'd leave 
him alone." 

One day I decided upon what seemed to me to 
be a fine plan. Our putting greens were sur- 
rounded by wire, so as to protect them from inva- 
sion by the animals. After about the fiftieth of my 
retreats from the white bull, I told the owner that 
if ever it went for me again, I should enter one of 
those protected areas, wait for the animal to come 
up to the wire, and then stick it in a vital part with 
the flag-pin which was in the hole. The flag-pin 
struck me as being a splendid idea; already I saw 
myself in the role of toreador. 

*'Don't tease the thing," he said again, "and you 
won't have any trouble with it." 



120 THE GIST OF GOLF 

Not long afterwards, I was inspecting the course 
in connection with the work of its upkeep, when I 
saw the bull approaching me in its usual truculent 
mood. It was fast gathering pace, so I made a dash 
for a putting green, leapt over the wire, seized the 
flag-pin, and returned to the fortification to carry 
out my stern resolve. On came the bull until it 
reached the bulwark — and then, to my horrified 
astonishment, it calmly put its feet over the wire 
and was in the enclosure with me. 

I jumped out again, and fortunately retained suf- 
ficient self-possession to realise that in the open field 
it would be no use trying to outpace the animal. 
I started to run round the wire on the outside, 
whereupon the bull followed me on the inside. 
Round and round we went, I know not how many 
times. 

Every now and again the enemy made a dash at 
me, but the wire kept him back, and luckily for 
me it never occurred to him to come out as he 
had entered. I realised, however, that if I ran 
away or stopped still, he would be over in an 
instant. 

Which of us would have collapsed first I do 
not know. The question was never put to the test, 
thanks to the providential intervention of a muffin- 
man. On a road about a hundred yards away this 
muffin-man approached, ringing his bell. Directly 
the bull heard the tinkle, it set ofiF pell-mell in the 
direction of my innocent deliverer. A hedge on the 



HOW TO USE THE MASHIE 121' 

fringe of the thoroughfare barred its progress, and 
meanwhile I fled to a place of safety. 

There was a rather interesting sequel to this inci- 
dent. One day I was relaying a teeing ground 
close to the fowl-house which graced the course. 
In the midst of the work my attention was sud- 
denly diverted by the spectacle of the white bull 
chasing its owner. He was running like a mad- 
man, and evidently in a state of panic, and in his 
desperation he dashed into the middle of the duck- 
pond near the fowl-house, where he stood almost 
up to his neck in water. I have to confess at this 
moment I was so unsympathetic as to shout : "You 
shouldn't tease the animal. He'd be all right if 
you'd leave him alone." 

The bull rushed up to the edge of the pond, 
where he stood lashing his tail angrily and glaring 
fiercely at his master. Then followed one of the 
pluckiest deeds that I have ever seen done by a boy. 
The landlord's son, a youth of about ten, seized the 
animal by the tail, and tried to pull him away. The 
bull turned round several times in savage efforts 
to get at the boy, but he held on like grim death. 
All of an instant the animal set off at top pace for 
its shed, dragging its assailant at its heels, and a 
few minutes later it was safely inside. The owner 
was so enraged that he followed it in and killed it 
by sticking it with a four-pronged fork, and that 
was the end of our troubles with the white bull of 
Bury. 



122 THE GIST OF GOLF 

Such was a sample of the conditions under which 
we pursued golf in England in those unsophisticated 
days when the game attracted little attention and 
when the expenditure of large sums of money on 
the provision of comfort was considered unneces- 
sary. I love to recall my associations with Bury, 
where I spent one of the happiest times of my life, 
but I cannot imagine what the modern golfer would 
think of the circumstances under which we played 
the game there. On summer evenings the famous 
Besses-o'-the-Barn Band, which has performed in 
all parts of the world, had the special right to use 
our last putting green as a place for practising. 
Fancy an up-to-date club permitting one of its 
treasured and carefully nurtured greens to be con- 
verted into a bandstand ! 

Caddies provide some of the richest humour of 
the links, and it is a pity that the stories of them 
are so often spoilt in print by the impossibility of 
conveying the quaint air of equality which so many 
of these club-bearers (and generally the best of 
them) adopt in their attitude towards their em- 
ployers. 

"Big" Crawford, perhaps the most famous of all 
the North Berwick caddies, was a real character. 
Many tales of him have been published ; here is one 
which, I think, is not generally known. 

For some time prior to his death Crawford kept 
the ginger-beer hut at the far end of the North Ber- 
wick links, and on special occasions he made a 



HOW TO USE THE MASHIE 123 

point of hoisting a flag over the structure. The 
Grand Duke Michael of Russia, paying one of his 
periodical visits to the course, duly reached the 
hut, and was evidently gratified to see the sign of 
rejoicing. 

"Ifs very good of you, Crawford," he said, "to 
have your flag out for me." 

*'Na, na, Mr. Michael," replied Crawford (he 
always called the Grand Duke "Mr." Michael), "it's 
for a better man than you. It's for Mr. Balfour.'" 
His admiration of Mr. Balfour was intense, and I 
believe that the latter, when writing to engage his 
favourite caddie, invariably began the letter, "My 
dear Crawford." 

I had one personal experience of Crawford. In 
1899 I went to North Berwick to play the first 
half of my match with Willie Park — the event 
which I regard as the most important of my golfing 
career. It was so because it provoked discussion 
for nearly a year before it took place (we were a 
long time coming to terms), and I do not think that 
two men ever embarked on a contest with a more 
desperate desire to win. 

On the evening before the beginning of the match, 
I went for a walk with my brother Tom. Sud- 
denly "Big" Crawford appeared round a corner, 
and like a flash he hurled a huge horseshoe at me. 

If I had not dodged it would have struck me 
on the head, and at the pace at which it was travel- 
ling it would very nearly have brained me. Truth 



124 THE GIST OF GOLF 

to tell, I did not altogether appreciate this method 
of delivering good fortune, but it was impossible 
to do other than laugh when he explained that he 
had put every penny he possessed on me and was 
determined to bring me luck. 

There was a curious incident in the course of 
that match. Park and I halved the first ten holes 
(a sequence without parallel, I think, in an event 
of the kind), and it was at the eleventh, where the 
succession of halves ended, that the strangest thing 
in the match happened. 

Park had driven, and his ball was lying far up 
the fairway. I drove, and my ball pitched plump 
on top of his and knocked it forward. But for 
the fact that there were fore-caddies, we should 
have known nothing of the collision, for we could 
not see it from the tee. His ball was replaced in 
its original position, and in the end he secured the 
hole. We had a terrific struggle that day at North 
Berwick, and I managed to finish two up. Park 
was not at his best when the second half of the 
match took place at Ganton, and as I was in the 
happy mood of being unable to do the wrong thing 
(we all have these pleasant attacks occasionally), 
I won pretty comfortably. 

I shall never forget the first caddie that ever I 
had in a championship. The occasion was the 
meeting at Prestwick, Scotland, in 1893, and my 
henchman was a hunchback about twelve years of 
age. He insisted on my taking his advice in regard 



HOW TO USE THE MASHIE 125 

to every shot that I played, and, being young at 
the time, I obeyed him faithfully. At length, how- 
ever, we came to a situation in which I did not in 
the least fancy his scheme for my good, and, ignor- 
ing his counsel, I executed the stroke that ap- 
pealed to me. His disgust was complete. From that 
moment he would have scarcely anything to do with 
me for the remainder of the championship. To be 
sure, he fulfilled his contract by continuing to carry 
my clubs, but he would not so much as take one 
out of my bag. Every time we came up to the ball 
he turned his back on me and held the bag at 
arm's length for me to select whatever club I might 
desire. It was useless to ask him for a hint. Such 
sustained and dignified indignation I have seen in 
no other boy of twelve. 

He was something like the average caddie in the 
United States, who, so far as my experience goes, 
is a monument of independence. When first the 
British golfer plays in the States, nothing astonishes 
him more than the completeness with which the 
American caddie has succeeded in establishing his 
task as an easy one. He seems to be a firm be- 
liever in the theory that it is wise for every player 
to tee his own ball. So it is, but I know a good 
many British golfers who would rather have a tee 
made badly than go to the trouble of preparing 
a proper one for themselves. The American caddie 
has a soul above club-cleaning — a task which is con- 
sidered part and parcel of the caddie's duties at the 



126 THE GIST OF GOLF 

end of a round in Britain. In the United States, 
I understand, the professional is usually considered 
responsible for it, and employs a special staff to 
have it done. 

To one caddie whom I had in America, I handed 
a ball and asked him to remove the mud which had 
clung to it as the result of a visit to a ditch. He 
took it without saying a word. A few holes later, 
I told him that I would use it again. He produced 
it, still covered with mud. 

"Why, you haven't cleaned it,'' I protested. 
"Haven't had time," he replied with engaging se- 
riousness. As he had had nothing else to do but 
walk, I hardly knew where to start an argument 
with him on the subject, so I said nothing. 

The keenest caddie I ever saw in America was 
the diminutive "Eddie" Lowry, who carried for 
Francis Ouimet when the latter beat Edward Ray 
and me for the Open Championship of the United 
States at Brookline, Mass., in 1913. "Eddie" was 
about ten years of age, and he looked less. He 
was hardly as big as the bag which he lugged round 
the course, and even in the strain of the struggle, one 
could not help smiling when he emerged from the 
great crowd, grappling earnestly with his load, and 
made his way up to his six-feet-high employer. If 
the fate of America had depended upon "Eddie" that 
day, he could not have been keener. Much more 
typical of the caddie in the States was, I think, the 
one who said cheerfully to me in the middle of a 



HOW TO USE THE MASHIE 127 

round at Miami: "Here, hold these clubs; I'll go 
and kill a snake for you." 

In some respects the most trying ordeal through 
which I ever passed was presented in a sporting 
goods store in Boston, during my first tour in the 
States over twenty years ago. The story may not 
be a new one, but perhaps it will be worth telling. 
The golf boom in America was just beginning to 
be something really big, and the manager of the 
store conceived the idea of my playing shots into 
a net erected in one of the showrooms. He offered 
me so handsome a reward for the exhibition that 
no sane professional would have refused it, and 
on the appointed day, I duly put in an appearance, 
ready to begin proceedings as arranged at half -past 
nine in the morning. The plan was that I should 
hit shots into the net for half an hour, rest for half 
an hour, begin again and so on till five o'clock came. 

The room was packed (there must have been 
some hundreds of people present all the time), and 
at the end of the first thirty minutes, I retired in 
accordance with the programme. 

Greatly to my astonishment the spectators broke 
into thunderous applause; they clapped, cheered, 
and thumped their sticks and umbrellas on the floor 
with such persistency that I had to return. After 
another spell of about half an hour I again retired, 
but the appreciation was as embarrassing as in the 
former interval, and I was obliged to resume imme- 
diately. 



128 THE GIST OF GOLF 

People were constantly coming and going, but the 
fresh arrivals seemed to be as satisfied as their 
predecessors, and I did not obtain five minutes' rest. 
What anybody can have seen in the performance 
I do not know — driving a ball into a net is hardly 
thrilling — but I had to do it all day. 

Seeking variety, I started to play some mashie 
shots at taps in the ceiling, and had just struck one 
of those objects when the manager rushed up to 
implore me to desist. It appeared that if I hap- 
pened to turn on the tap connected with the fire 
extinguisher, it would flood the store ! 

At about four o'clock I felt that I had had enough 
of it. I made my customary exit; the applause re- 
started, but once I was out of the showroom, I fled 
from the building. Nobody could have continued 
the game any longer. 

The manager told me afterwards that during the 
day they sold every club in the shop. That will 
give you some idea of the enthusiasm with which 
golf was taken up in the early days of its boom in 
America. 

Golf shots sometimes meet with strange fates, 
and I think that the queerest I ever played was at 
St. Andrews. I was doing a good round until I 
came to the last hole. On the right of the course 
at this hole is a row of houses, but they are so 
far away as usually to be safe. On this occasion, 
however, I imparted so terrific a slice to my ball 
that it landed on top of one of the buildings. 



HOW TO USE THE MASHIE 12g 

bounced down, and finished its career in a drain- 
pipe. 

An errant-shot that had a happier ending was 
one which I saw played at Ganton, in Yorkshire, 
when I was professional there. A golfer hit a 
tee-shot which struck a caddie on the head, whence 
it rebounded on to the club-house, and from there 
on to the green, where it lay within easy holing dis- 
tance. We all expected to see the caddie drop in 
a stunned condition, but he stood his ground and, 
on being presented with a sovereign by the relieved 
player, he said with a grin : "Have another try !" 

They were interesting days at Ganton. We had 
time for a variety of sports, and an event in which 
golfers played no small part was an annual Christ- 
mas Day football match between Ganton and the 
neighbouring village of Sherburn. I captained 
Ganton for two years, but it was not during my 
period in that responsible position that a local 
plasterer was drafted into our side in order to fill 
an eleventh-hour vacancy. He was a huge fellow, 
and he was placed at full-back with instructions to 
allow no opponent to pass him. He was entirely 
innocent of the rules of football, but he carried 
out his commission with a vengeance. He never 
went for the ball ; he simply hurled himself pell-mell 
at any rival who came his way, and the results were 
alarming. Two of our opponents had to be assisted 
off the field, and most of the others were more or 
less injured. For those of us who had the playing 



130 THE GIST OF GOLF 

of golf to consider, it was fortunate that he was on 
our side and not against it. 

A singular incident occurred once when I was 
playing Willie Fernie, Open Champion in his day, 
on the Timperley course, Manchester. Fernie hit 
his ball close to a spot at which a horse was feeding. 
The animal looked curiously at the white sphere; 
then the demon of mischief seemed suddenly to 
take possession of it. Grabbing the ball in its 
mouth, the horse galloped off with it at top-speed 
a full half-mile. If ever the spirit of practical 
joking was reflected on the countenance of an ani- 
mal, it was depicted on that horse's face as it dashed 
off with the ball. 

Nobody knew quite what ought to be done, and 
in the end Fernie dropped another ball as near as 
possible to the spot from which the original one 
was purloined, and continued the game as though 
nothing had happened. That would be the correct 
procedure under the present rules. I rather fancy- 
it was contrary to the law of those days, but it was 
equitable. 

From time to time one sees some extraordinary 
golfing styles, and a player who used to fascinate 
me by the weirdness of his methods was a man 
who could only hit the ball with the top of the 
club-head — that is to say, on the part where the 
maker's name is inscribed on the driver. That may 
sound incredible, but it is true. How he did it I do 
not know, but the fact remains that he was incapable 



HOW TO USE THE MASHIE 131 

of striking the ball with the face of the instrument 
or even with the sole, which would have produced 
a topped shot. He hit it every time right on the 
top surface of the head, and the consequence was 
that he could not use iron clubs; there was not 
enough striking surface — on top ! 

Even when he was under a hedge, he would call 
for a spoon, and in some wonderful manner scoop 
the ball up by making the impact with the top part 
of the head. He wore the name off his clubs in a 
few weeks, for he was a regular and enthusiastic 
player, and he never varied in his methods. 

There were times when, in playing for a green, 
he would strike out in such unexpected directions 
as to work his way all round the place at which 
he was aiming before he finally reached it. He 
would invade the fairways of four or five other 
holes in the vicinity, and pursue his chequered 
career by way of bunkers, ponds, and a dozen other 
places of punishment intended for errant shots, at 
holes some distance away. I saw him once work 
his way round all four sides of a green before 
finally he got on to it. His patience was monumen-^ 
tal, and in some of his rounds, he must have walked 
quite double the normal distance. He was a real 
enthusiast. 

Long enough have we been reminiscent. I would 
ask you to turn again to the serious business of 
this chapter — the part that has to do with how to» 
use the mashie. 



THE MASHIE 

ILLUSTRATIVE CHART 










Stance and Address. — Note that the player is 
closer to the ball than for any former shot, and the 
body is bendinor so that the head is well over the ball. 
The position is one of ease — no tautness ol the muscles. 




Beginning of Up-Swing. — The chief movement 
has been the bending of the left knee, in order to 
cause the hip to pivot. This pivoting has really begun 
at the knee and the left heel has hardly risen from 
the ground. 




Top of Swing — The left knee has bent a httlc 
more, and the heel is just off the ground. This length 
of swing is little more than a half swing and is as much 
as the good golfer attempts with the mashie, because 
of the vital need of controlling the length of the shot. 




Beginning of Down-Swing. — This picture 
emphasises the point that the first movement from 
the top o^ the swing is purely a movement of the arms, 
in order to give the club head a start on its downward 
path. Now the body is about to turn to perform 
the counterpart of the up-swing. 



THE MASHIE 




Finish of Swing. — An easy follow through pro- 
ducing a shot of from seventy to eighty yards in 
length. There has been no attempt to " scoop " the 
ball, a common and rather fatal mistake with the 
mashie. The loft of the club, if allowed to do its 
work naturally, is sufficient to lift the ball. 



Chapter VI: A STUDY OF PUTTING 

THE METHOD THAT SUCCEEDS 



• 

«* 



Chapter VI 
A STUDY OF PUTTING 

THE METHOD THAT SUCCEEDS 

I AM not sure that there is any golden rule for 
achieving success on the putting green. A 
few well-defined principles there are that seem to 
have logic on their side, but they are only part of 
the constitution of that dispensation which we call 
deadly putting. The rest of the formula is a matter 
of individuality which cannot be communicated to 
anybody; it has to be born in a person. 

I am far from suggesting that it is impossible 
to improve one's putting. Indeed, I know no detail 
of the game in which practice is of greater value. 
But that is mainly because it enables each player to 
discover for himself just what special character- 
istics he possesses in the business of laying the ball 
dead from a distance of twenty yards, or holing 
out with certainty at a range of one yard — to learn 
how he is meant by nature to accomplish these tasks. 
Different golfers accomplish them in many differ- 
ent ways as regards their stances, grips, and meth- 
ods of hitting the ball. 

Putting is the department of golf which, more 
135 



^laS' THE GIST OF GOLF 

• than any other, lends itself to experimentation and 
the exploitation of pet theories. So far as concerns 
the manner in which you stand, and the style in 
which you hold the club, and the sort of putter that 
you use (so long as they are not downright ridicu- 
lous), I am convinced that fancy may be allowed 
a fairly free rein. The all-important matter is to 
light upon a method that gives you the feeling that 
you are going to succeed, and then to practise it. 

I doubt if any two people have precisely the same 
touch, which is a matter of supreme moment in put- 
ting. It represents the communication of the tem- 
perament and the nervous system in their most 
sensitive form to the act of striking a ball. Touch 
is of less account where the longer shots are con- 
cerned, because of the necessity of firm hitting. 

In putting, it is delicacy in striking and a happy 
merging of caution into boldness in the mental atti- 
tude that produces the desired effect. Some things 
— such as swaying the body during the movement 
of the club — are bad, but the question as to what 
is good opens up a wide field for exploration in 
which everybody can spend an interesting hour. 
What I would propose is that, when the player has 
discovered the method that gives him the greatest 
confidence, he should remain faithful to it unless it 
fails him long and badly at some later stage, and 
practise it for a quarter of an hour whenever he 
has the opportunity. In these periods he will learn 
much as to the strength that is required in striking 



V ' 



1 



A STUDY OF PUTTING 137 

the ball and the degree of "borrow" that is neces- 
sary on sloping greens — that is, if he pursues his 
studies, as he should do, on a green which boasts 
a certain amount of undulation. 

Whenever I discuss this subject, I am reminded 
of an elderly amateur who used to play on the Mid- 
Surrey course, near London, and who was wont to 
astonish strangers by his putting procedure. One 
day he was engaged in a match with a member of 
the Royal and Ancient Club who prided himself on 
being steeped to the finger-tips in the traditions of 
the game. On the first three greens the elderly 
gentleman, standing conspicuously straddle-legged, 
as was his custom, holed long putts — all wi^ his 
driver. "Look here," said the St. Andrews vi^or, 
"do you use that thing for short putts as well?" 

"Short putts?" repeated the local eccentric. 
"Haven't I had a short putt yet? No, of course, 
I haven't. Oh, I always take 'this for short putts" 
— ^^and, diving to the bottom of his bag, he pro- 
duced a specimen of the (^dinary household 
hammer ! 

I hesitate to think that anybody need have gone 
to such extremes as these, but there is every reason 
why the player should select the cl«b that takes his 
fancy, whether it be made of wood, iron, or alumi- 
num, without paying slavish attenfion to the types 
preferred by other and possibly better golfers. 

Perhaps I need not, remind the reader that my 
reputation as a holer-out is deplorable. How many 



/T 



^ 



138 THE GIST OF GOLF 

short putts I have missed during the past fifteen 
or twenty years I should not like to estimate. They 
must number thousands. Once you lose your con- 
fidence near the hole, you are in a desperate plight, 
especially when you have a reputation to uphold 
and you know that a putt of two feet counts for 
as much as the most difficult iron shot. Nobody 
can say that a putt of this length calls for any real 
skill at golf; it simply demands confidence. 

People who happen to have seen much of my 
play, tell me that in approach-putting I need not 
desire to be better than I am, and personally I am 
well satisfied with my form in this part of the game. 
So that perhaps I may, without presumption, offer 
a few hints as to how to lay the ball by the hole- 
side from anywhere near the edge of the green. 
I am convinced that absolute stillness of the head 
and body is essential. One or two good putters 
there are who sway forward as they strike the ball, 
but they are such very rare phenomena as only to 
accentuate the importance to the ordinary mortal 
of the still head and body. 

The stance may be that in which the player feels 
most comfortable, although I certainly do not be- 
lieve in standing with the feet far apart. Rather 
would I go to the other extreme, and have the heels 
touching. This, however, is largely a matter of per- 
sonal choice. If you keep the head and the body 
absolutely still, and take the club back so that it is 



A STUDY OF PUTTING 139 

not pushed outwards away from the feet but inclines 
rather to come in slightly in the back swing, you 
ought to hit the ball in a straight line. And that is 
obviously the first essential of successful putting. 
Judgment of strength must come with practice. 

When I was younger, I putted in a manner which 
was really a concentrated form of what is known 
as the push shot. I addressed the ball with the 
hands a little in front of it, so that the face of the 
club was tilted over in a slight degree on to the 
ball. As the club was a putting cleek with a trifle 
of loft on it, this tilting over produced the effect of 
a straight-faced club, and I simply came down on 
to the back of the ball, and away it would speed 
with back-spin — either to the hole-side or into the 
tin. 

This principle suited me extremely well for years, 
but I changed it ultimately in favour of a smooth, 
pendulum swing; the arms moving backwards and 
forwards to swing the club, and the head and body 
l^eing perfectly still. I think it is the soundest sys- 
tem; certainly it has suited me remarkably well in 
playing all kinds of long putts, and the reason I 
have missed so many short ones has been mainly 
a tendency to lift the head with a jerk through that 
"jump" which one experiences when one fears sud- 
denly that a shot is going wrong. 

I am a whole-hearted believer in the overlapping 
grip for putting, and even the person who does not 



140 THE GIST OF GOLF 

fancy it in driving can adapt himself easily to it 
on the green. It promotes that unison of the hands 
which is so important, for if you have the two 
hands working independently in ever so slight a 
degree in the delicate business of controlling a putt, 
the result is nearly sure to be disastrous. 

Examine the line only from the ball ; never from 
the hole. The confusion that results from studying 
the line from both ends is embarrassing beyond 
words ; whenever I have done it, I have seen differ- 
ent lines, and that observed from the hole has 
proved to be the wrong one. 

The bugbear of the short putt is, perhaps, that 
one is apt to exaggerate its difficulties. The longer 
one looks at it the greater appear to become little 
tftidulations in the line, until in the end one tries 
to do cleverly, by '"borrowing," that which might 
be accomplished easily with a straightforward, con- 
fident shot of strength calculated to send the ball 
firmly to the back of the tin. 

It is a nice question as to the precise stage at 
which a sense of dignity should restrain a golfer 
from gratifying little whims which, in his opinion, 
would help his game without contravening the rules. 

Thus, I witnessed not long ago a novel method 
of dq^ling with those troublesome trifles — short 
putts. At least, it was novel as regards the nature 
of the implement with which it was performed. 
The shaft and the blade of the club constituted 
a sharp right angle. The heel was absolutely square. 



A STUDY OF PUTTING 141 

It was a weapon that might have been made as a 
cubic caricature of an ordinary putting cleek; it 
scorned the idea of rounding off corners. 

Obviously, however, it was not illegal according 
to the letter of the law. Nor was the manner of 
using it, which was the same as that adopted several 
years ago by a coterie of people in Britain who 
employed croquet mallets as putters. 

The player stands full-faced to the hole, his two 
feet more or less parallel to the line which he pro- 
poses tolake, and swings the club between his legs. 
He doea^not swing it very far, because he employs 
it only, I think, for short putts. As a means of 
mastering those sometimes demoralising nuisances, 
he claims that it is pre-eminent. A famous golfer 
said some time ago, that if he had the pluck to be 
seen with such a thing, he would use it every time 
he found himself close to the hole and under the 
absolute necessity of getting the ball down to avoid 
losing. 

One advantage claimed is that in facing the hole 
and pushing the arms straight out instead of stand- 
ing sideways and swinging the arms alongside the 
body, the player virtually disposes of the danger of 
allowing one hand to work against the other. The 
wrists have little chance of taking charge of the 
situation. The main idea is that you can only be sure 
of obtaining the pendulum action by standing full- 
face to the hole and letting the arms move out and 
back again in front of the body. It is contended 



142 THE GIST OF GOLF 

that the practice of swinging the arms from side 
to side is utterly unsuited to the purpose, and that 
people adopt it for no better reason than that it 
is necessary for the longer shots. Putting, it is 
pointed out by the daring innovator, is different 
from anything else in the game, and calls for an 
entirely different process. 

This is mostly theory, but the independent soul 
who has had the courage to put it to the test has 
prospered exceedingly on his unorthodoxy, and he 
now walks about the links apparently immune from 
the terrorising influence which a four-foot putt is 
apt to exercise on the average person who is under 
the necessity of holing it for a half. 

Whether our good friend, the inventor, is really 
playing golf as' it is supposed to be played, I will 
not attempt to decide. An ex-champion who 
coquetted with the club and the stance concluded 
his experiment with th*fe remark that he wished he 
had the cheek to try it in a championship, but it 
would be hard to settle from that sentiment whether 
he regarded it as a mere piece of impudence or a 
worthy means spoilt only by its alarming uncon- 
ventionality. 

Certainly in the laws there is nothing to say how 
a person shall stand to play any shot, and it is od- 
vious that this square-headed putter is not contrary 
to anything that appears under the heading of 
"Form and Make of Golf Clubs.*' Indeed, the only 
heresy is contained in the manner of standing, 



^ A STUDY OF PUTTING 143 

which is painfully like the freakish method of the 
one-time mallet adherents. 

Whether, however, it is reasonable to object to 
the manner in which a man disposes his feet and 
arms, especially for the tricky business of holing 
short putts, is a moot point. If he believes in the 
pendulum swing, perhaps he ought to be allowed 
to work out his salvation in his own way. 

The late Tom Ball, twice runner-up in the British 
open championship, was one of the finest putters in 
the world, and he used to express frank and whole- 
hearted disapproval of the pendulum swing, which, 
he considered, tended to make a player tighten all 
his muscles when putting, and so develop a condi- 
tion of tautness in which he could not strike the 
ball smoothly and easily. Ball put his case con- 
vincingly, but I do not think his method of swaying 
through with the club would suit the ordinary 
golfer. For the great majority, the idea of the 
pendulum swing is absolutely sound. The arms 
travel to and fro like the wire on which the clock- 
weight is suspended. The frame remains still. 

That, at least, is the faith of thousands of play- 
ers, and if one of them has found a way of making 
it work well by standing facing the hole, he is hardly 
to be blamed for putting his discovery into opera- 
tion. After all, we do sometimes find that a clock 
which is recalcitrant when it is standing in its proper 
position will begin to tick right merrily when we 
turn it on to its side or make it lie down on its 



144 THE GIST OF GOLF 

face. Why this is I do not know ; but it is conceiv- 
able that there are human beings whose works are 
similarly capricious, and who cannot be sure of 
obtaining the proper movement of the machinery 
unless they humour their constitutions. 

Thus, Captain H. E. Hambro, a good putter, used 
to stand conspicuously straddle-legged, on the prin- 
ciple that it was then impossible for him to sway 
his body during the swing. Many players who are 
equally good believe that one of the secrets of suc- 
cess is to place the heels close together. Some golf- 
ers have faith in the square stance ; others stand so 
very open as to be at least half facing the hole in 
the address. There seems to be no reason why a 
person should not go the whole hog, and, making a 
full left turn, unabashedly face the hole. I dare 
say that a lot remains to be learnt about putting. 

Personally, I have made successful experiments 
at times— in public matches,, it may be added— 
with left-handed putting. I have adopted this ex- 
pedient when a right arm "jump" has been causing 
me to clutch the club extra tightly with the right 
hand the instant before the impact. Nearly every 
golfer has experienced this "jump" at some time or 
other; it is bom of over-anxiety to do well, and is 
uncontrollable. 

On the first occasion that I stood the wrong way 
round for putting— it was an exhibition match 
against, I think, Braid— I holed a putt of three 
yards. It is a very revolutionary remedy, but 



A STUDY OF PUTTING 145 

as half the bad putting is brought about by gripping 
too tightly with one hand or the other at the critical 
period of the stroke, almost any means of checking 
it is worth trying. 

The overlapping grip discourages an unduly tight 
hold of the club, and, for that reason, it is a very 
good grip for putting, even in the case of golfers 
who do not like it when playing long shots. Tom 
Ball, whom I mentioned previously as a heretic on 
the subject of the pendulum swing, once related to 
me how he became converted to the overlapping 

grip. 

On the eve of an important event. Ball was pump- 
ing the tyre of his bicycle, when he ran the pump 
deeply into the fleshy part of the right hand, just 
below the thumb. He was anxious to take part in 
the competition, but he soon discovered that, with 
the ordinary palm grip, the pressure necessary with 
the right hand merely to enable him to keep control 
of the club caused great pain. 

The overlapping grip, in the exercise of which 
the injured portion naturally rested upon the com- 
paratively sympathetic flesh of the left thumb, af- 
forded him considerable relief. He decided to em- 
ploy it. He never afterwards abandoned it. 

Ball had another story showing the efficacy of 
accidents as cures for golfing ills. When he was 
professional at the West Lancashire Club, near Liv- 
erpool, he often played with an esteemed doctor 
whose chief fault on the links was, in the opinion 



146 THE GIST OF GOLF 

of Ball, that he jammed his right thumb too firmly 
on the handle of the club. He pressed so hard with 
it that, towards the top of the swing, the thumb 
and the club were apt to be fighting against one 
another. 

The victim, however, seemed unable to rid him- 
self of his vice. One day retribution overtook the 
thumb. Its owner ran a needle into it. He did 
not commit this act of malice aforethought on the 
principle that a desperate remedy might cure a des- 
perate disease ; it was an accident which caused him 
considerable annoyance at the time, since he had 
arranged to play golf on that very morning. He 
explained what he had done, and that he would 
have to give up the idea of going out for a round. 

"Not at all," said Ball. "YouVe done the best 
thing in the world for yourself. You won't be able 
to press with the right thumb now." The lucky doc- 
tor went out and showed excellent form. And so 
happiness was brought to another soul. 

Then there is the interesting case of Mr. Harold 
H. Hilton, who, at a time when the surgeon had 
forbidden him to play golf at all, accomplished 
what he has described as the best performance 
of his life. Most people who have studied the 
history of the game know that the rivalry between 
Mr. Hilton and the late Lieut. F. G. Tait was ex- 
ceptionally keen. They met fairly often in various 
events, but for some strange reason, their struggles 
nearly always ended in the discomfiture of Mr. 



A STUDY OF PUTTING 147 

Hilton. Only once did he succeed during the per- 
iod in which Lieut. Tait occupied a position in the 
front rank of golfers, and that occasion was pre- 
sented at the very time when Mr. Hilton was sup- 
posed to be nursing an injured hand. 

The competition was for the St. George's Cup 
at Sandwich. The season was 1894. Some weeks 
before the meeting, Mr. Hilton badly tore the main 
sinew leading from the thumb and forefinger to the 
wrist. He was ordered by the surgeon to give up 
golf for a long while, and not to think of carrying 
out his idea of competing for the St. George's Cup. 

Being as keen as he was human, he ignored the 
advice. From the time of the accident until he 
reached Sandwich, he did not use his injured hand ; 
then he used it to such good purpose that he won. 
He was coupled with Lieut. Tait, and with a score 
of 167, the Englishman gained by three strokes the 
one and only sweet triumph over the favourite ene- 
my. 

In all these cases the players had to adopt a light 
grip, for the simple reason that their injuries pre- 
vented them from holding tightly, and I venture to 
say that they discovered something as to its merits, 
especially in putting. It is an involuntary tighten- 
ing of the grip during the putting swing that causes 
the body to become rigid, and it is when the body 
is rigid that it is most likely to move. 

I am sure that all my bad short putts — and they 
have been many — have been the result of moving 



148 THE GIST OF GOLF 

the body, which has been the outcome of the right 
arm *'jump" and consequent tightening of the grip. 

Some very excellent putters — I would mention 
Willie Park and Arnaud Massy as examples — find 
that they obtain the best results, especially in play- 
ing long putts, by imparting a little "pull" to the 
ball. It is done by striking the ball nearer to the 
toe than the heel of the club-face; the mere act of 
following through in a rhythmic way secures the 
effect of "pull" so long as the impact occurs near 
the toe of the club. It is worth trying by the 
golfer who is inclined to "cut" his putts, for that, 
I think, is the worst thing possible with the modem 
ball, although Jack White used to practise it very 
effectively with the old ball. I place my faith now- 
adays in striking the ball with the middle of the 
club-face, swinging pendulum-like, and keeping the 
sole of the putter close to the ground throughout 
the swing. 

Golf, for all the appearance of tame tranquillity 
that it is apt to present to the uninitiated mind, pro- 
vides a more searching test of nerve and tempera- 
ment than any other game in the world. That, in- 
deed, is the opinion of most people who are exper- 
ienced in the pursuit of sports and pastimes, and it 
is the cause of a phenomenon which offers much 
food for reflection. Golf is unique in the respect 
that it has two types of first-class players who are 
in the same grade so far as concerns the ability to 
hit the ball with complete skill and in perfect style. 



A STUDY OF PUTTING 149 

but who differ entirely in the results which they 
achieve in important events. One party can win 
championships, and the other party cannot for the 
life of it do anything of the kind. Yet to the per- 
son who has studied the methods of the less for- 
tunate individuals, there seems at first blush to be no 
way of accounting for their failures. 

In a comparatively minor competition or a prac- 
tice round, they play in a manner which suggests 
that they are capable of succeeding in the strongest 
company and on any occasion. They execute the 
most intricate shot with ease and grace; it is im- 
possible to be other than enthusiastic about their 
gifts. Somehow, when they make their efforts in 
classic tournaments, they prove deficient with a reg- 
ularity that is distressing. To mention names would 
be invidious; every devotee of the game knows 
that there are truly great golfers who never secure 
championships, and who exhibit such characteristics 
that, after a while, they are hardly so much as ex- 
pected to win. Yet all the time they are recognised 
as brilliant players. Something is lacking in their 
nerve or temperament (the words, I suppose, are 
synonymous), and it is interesting to consider the 
various phases of this strange condition of affairs. 

Personally, I am satisfied that in order to be a 
champion, a person must have a good deal of sensi- 
tiveness in his nervous system. The man of slug- 
gish disposition, the player with a truly ''phlegmatic 
temperament" (that phrase which is so often used 



150 THE GIST OF GOLF 

approvingly in regard to the individual who re- 
mains outwardly calm in a crisis) would not be 
likely to rise to greatness on the links. Of all 
games, golf is the one that comes nearest to being 
an art. It is pursued with deliberation and method ; 
its inspirations are the player's own creation, since 
he is never called upon to strike a moving ball the 
action of which has been influenced by his rival. 
It demands the greatest delicacy and accuracy of 
touch, as well as, in many circumstances, the power 
to hit hard. An art requires a sensitive nervous 
system, and in golf the difference between the two 
sections of first-class players to whom I have re- 
ferred is, presumably, that one can keep its nerves 
under control during the most trying period and the 
other cannot. 

I have seen men positively trembling with excite- 
ment at the critical stage of a contest, and yet pos- 
sessed of such command over themselves as to be 
able to play every shot perfectly. This is just about 
as valuable a gift as the championship aspirant can 
possess, and to express surprise at a person's defi- 
ciency in regard to it is just about as reasonable as 
to be astonished at his inability to disperse a head- 
ache by will-power. For the great majority of 
people, it is in connection with short putts that 
nerves attain their most painful activity; there is 
nothing else in sport quite like the short putt at 
golf. You know that there can be no reasonable 
excuse for failing to knock a ball into a hole four 



A STUDY OF PUTTING 151 

feet distant, and yet there is a considerable chance 
of failing. And the higher the reputation of the 
player and the more, therefore, that is expected 
of him, the greater are the trials of the short putt. 
For all the skill that it requires he has no advan- 
tage over the 24-handicap man, and he realises that, 
if he misses it, there will be no chance of recovery. 
It will be a hole lost or a stroke gone. 

In all sincerity I express the opinion, after hav- 
ing undertaken three lengthy tours in the United 
States, that American golfers are better holers-out 
than British golfers. They are the cooler on the 
putting greens, and, after all, absence of anxiety is 
the chief essence of success. 

Without doubt successful putting is mainly a 
matter of confidence, and that several great golfers 
fail to win championships by reason of their weak- 
ness near the hole is probably due to the fact that 
they have never gained complete confidence in their 
ability to get down a four-foot putt. For many 
happy years it did not so much as enter my head 
that I could miss a short putt, except as the result 
of carelessness; then I struck a bad patch in this 
hitherto simple business. The result was that there 
developed in my right forearm a nerve which puz- 
zled a good many medical friends, and subjected 
me to indescribable mental torture. Whenever I pre- 
pared to play a short putt (it was only close to 
the hole that I had any trouble, so that the affliction 
must have been born largely of imagination and 



152 THE GIST OF GOLF 

environment), I would wait for that nerve in the 
right arm to jump. The instant I felt it was about 
to start, I would make a dash at the ball in a des- 
perate effort to be in first with the shot, and what 
happened as a consequence of this haste may be 
readily imagined. 

Occasionally, the "jump" would leave me en- 
tirely for a month or two. Early in the final round 
of the open championship at Prestwick, in 1914, 
the wretched thing suddenly re-asserted itself. I 
felt the "jump" with a thrill of apprehension that is 
far from being a pleasant memory. Anyhow, the 
main point was not to let my partner and only for- 
midable rival at that stage, J. H. Taylor, know 
anything about it. He was as well aware as I that 
if the distress became serious, I could miss putts 
down to six inches; it was strange to be walking 
along reflecting earnestly that not the smallest ink- 
ling of this development must be allowed to reach 
Taylor's ears, lest it should stimulate him to believe, 
as almost certainly it would have done, that he had 
me as good as beaten. Perhaps it was just this di- 
version from the thought of the possibilities of the 
jump itself, that enabled me partially to overcome 
it and to struggle home first. 

As a test of nerve, that last day's play at Prest- 
wick was far and away the most trying I can re- 
member. That we should have drawn ahead of the 
other competitors and then been drawn together 
for the final rounds was in itself sufficient to agi- 



A STUDY OF PUTTING 15S 

tate either of us to the utmost; that we should 
have been struggling for the honour of a sixth vic- 
tory in the championship (each of us, and also 
James Braid, having previously won five times) 
filled the cup of excitement to overflowing. I know 
that I played one shot without seeing the ball at all. 
It was buried in fine, loose sand, in a bunker to 
the left of the eleventh green, and close to the face 
of the hazard. The sand was scraped away from 
the top of the ball, but it was so loose that it closed 
over the object again. I simply could not wait; I 
swung, guessing and hoping, and fortunately hit the 
shot all right 

That was an exceptional occasion. In the ordi- 
nary way, I bear constantly in mind the conviction 
that the best way to win any important event is to 
play just as one would play a private round at 
home, and not endeavour to accomplish the per- 
formance of a lifetime. There is such a thing as 
trying too hard ; it begets anxiety, which is usually 
fatal— especially in putting. 



THE PUTTER 

ILLUSTRATIVE CHART 



A Long Putt. — (1) In the stance and address the 
ball should be nearly opposite the right heel, the heels 
being close together. This club should be used with 
the same movement and rhythm as the pendulum 
of a clock. 




A Long Putt. — (2) The photograph shows the 
back swing, which involves a very slight turn of the 
hips. The position of the arms produce the beginning 
of a pendulum swing. 




A Long Putt. — The finish. The club head has 
followed through as nearly as possible on the line of 
the putt and has risen slightly from the ground. 




A Shorter Putt. — (1) Hardly any movement ot 
the body is needed for this shot, the wrists and arms 
alone producing the correct swing. 



THE PUTTER 




A Shorter Putt. — (2) The club head is almost 
grazing the top of the grass and following through 
on the line of the shot. As a point of interest it may 
be mentioned that this actual putt went down. 




I, 



